gwynethgracelee

[gwynethgracelee]

Week One - Process

Our task for our first week of the TTM(K) Publishing Studio involved sifting through physical archived material in the RMIT Design Archive and collect images on the subject of "process". I wanted to represent collecting different parts of information and making something whole. I decided to hand-draw the word “process” using black ink on paper in a cursive font, with each letter appearing randomly appearing one-by-one within a set of quotation marks, eventually revealing the whole word.

This task was super enlightening as I didn’t even know this building even existed. I had lots of fun sifting through all the archived magazines and posters, and deep-diving into the process of silk screen printing. I used yellow as the background colour to reflect my emotions of happiness and insightfulness.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Two - Constellation

In this class, we visited the Women’s Art Register located in the Richmond Library. We were tasked to pick an object of cultural significance and do a constellation of research around it. This gif shows 10 stars white stars on a navy background representing a nighty sky. When the constellation is mapped out using a dashed line, the stars form shape of an open book. This book represents the object I did research around, which was “Know My Name”, published by the National Gallery of Victoria.

This method of research was super helpful as it prompted me to dive deeper into the reasons behind why the book was made, and create connections between information that I found in archive as well as information found online.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Three - Catalogued Object

In week 3, we visited the Melbourne Art Library. We were tasked to get into groups, pick a few books and sort them using library codes. We picked 7 colourful books and decided to sort them by colours of the rainbow, from red to violet.

This gif displays four codes used at the library, 110$a = author, 245$a = name, 260$c = year published, and finally 300$a = type of object. Each code is encased within a black outlined box, similar to what each code looked in the published object for this week. Every code uses a different contrasting colour against a bright red background, representing how we decided to sort the books.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Four - Glossary

This gif starts off as a black pixelated blob on a magenta background. The blog morphs into the word ‘glossary’, with a variety of fonts used for each letter.

The reason that this gif starts of warped represents my confusion I had with the brief at first, however once I heard other people’s presentations I quickly realised how my object could’ve been improved.

My glossary was originally meant to be part of the magazine, a tear out in the beginning so that readers could use it to guide, however now I would add it to the RMIT archive to help people who don’t know much about Melbourne in this specific time period, as well as people reader from overseas who don’t understand specific terms related to Australian jargon.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Five - House Charter

For our group project, we were first asked to create house charter. Our publishing house was called 'SSG Publishing' and members included me, Sophie Suchting and Sarah Tran. We then assigned roles to each member.

This week’s gif includes 3 frames, each frame with a different outline of a sketched house, on a bright blue background. Our house charter changed slightly throughout the project, as it started originally with me interviewing and Sarah transcribing, however as we worked through I no longer was available and both Sophie and Sarah shared this interview role. The changing of houses is supposed to represent change, and the blue background represents the predominant colour for our group assignment outcome.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Six - Email

The next step in our group assignment was to reach out to our chosen interviewee, Kai Brach. Sarah Tran was our initial contact with Brach, and our group collaborated to write the email. We swiftly briefed Kai about who we are, requested an interview and inquired about a date and time.

This gif shows the date of our first email, April 24th 2024, along with the recipient ‘To: Kai Brach’, the sender ‘From: SSG Publishing’, and the ‘Subject: ‘Interview Request’.

We can also see words slowly begin to be typed out in a spiral formation, which reads: “Hi Kai, We are a group of Communication Design Students at RMIT. We have been tasked with interviewing someone from the publishing industry, and we are interested in asking about your experience in this field”.

The spiral symbolises the process of refinement made whilst we developed this email, making sure our message was clear and professional sounding.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Seven - Standfirst

In this gif, we see the words “Print to Pixels” change from black text to simply a few pixels, then back to text again.

This title relates to the standfirst created in this week’s class, which aims to give a reader a brief summary of the content they will continue to read. In our case, after interviewing Kai Brach, we documented his journey from being the creator of print Offscreen Magazine, to then evolving to the digital world with his online newsletter, Dense Discovery. This gif and title aims to capture the main content of the interview, changing from text to pixels. The background colour uses a royal blue, one of the shades that appeared in our final printed outcome.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Eight - Dummy

For this weeks published outcome, our group made a quick dummy to plan page order and layout in our final publication. We marked which pages were going to be translucent, and those that were going to be normal paper pages. This was very helpful for us when creating our InDesign document separately.

In this gif, we see 10 sketched rectangle frames on a light grey background, with each frame gradually filling up with content overtime. This content includes rough scribbles of a title page, question headings and layout of words and text, however most text is illegible.

I wanted to visualise that this task allowed us to be a bit messy, but still stay organised and plan the work that needed to be done.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Nine - Quote Poster

In week 9, we were to create a quote poster, taking any quote we enjoyed from the interview.

“Everyone has these giant followings and it's all measured in big audiences nowadays, but there's real value in connecting with this smaller audience, being consistent and persistent at doing it.” - Kai Brach.

This quote particularly stood out to me because it taught me that you don’t have a lot of followers in order to have “made it”, and that it is better to have a smaller following of people who are loyal to you.

This gif shows two frames, one with 15 sketched stick people representing a larger audience, and the other with only 3 people representing a smaller following, linking back to the quote. These sketches are placed over a green background, which in this context symbolises loyalty in an audience. While blue is traditionally used to represent loyalty, green has connections to harmony and stability.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Ten - Rare Books Video

For this week, we were tasked to make a quick, 3 minute video for this year’s Melbourne Rare Book Fair, speaking about an object from the RMIT Design Archive and reflecting on our experience there.

I ended up speaking to the published object I made in week one and how the archive helped me collect and research. In the video, I also discussed how one could flick through and analyse older, physical material, where there was little information online.

This gif shows all the frames that were in my final video, with the first frame being an introductory slide including text about my name & course: “Gwyneth Lee, RMIT Bachelor of Communication Design”. This is also supported with two photos from the RMIT Design Archive building, as well as a photo of myself. The second frame showed large text “Process”, and 4 snaps of black and white photos showing the process of silk screen printing. The final slide shows two photos of the front and the back of my messy research poster, along with the subtitle “Week One Completed Object”.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Eleven - Feedback

For our last class before presentations, we spoke to another person about how our final project was going, specifically answering the question “What is it?” and describing what we were going to make. I spoke to both Sarah and Sophie about how I was planning on making 12 gifs, with each gif having one word describing the emotion I felt during each week. Their feedback was to use images as well as text, and to include motion that links to my reflections on each week.

In this gif, we can see text in the middle of a purple background that reads “What is it?” which quickly morphs into a sketched question mark. Purple has been used as it can represents embracing the new and evolving of ideas. The morphing of text to images also represents the onboard of the feedback mentioned above.

[gwynethgracelee]

Week Twelve - Curatorial Statement

For our last class, we were to make a curatorial statement that outlines this final assessment, explaining any concepts and themes we have used and why this format was chosen.

I had multiple ideas that I originally wanted to do, however I did ended up settling on GIFs as I wanted to expand my skills with motion and make quick moving images that were attention grabbing.

In this gif, there is a bright orange background, and 5 pieces of black text. The colour orange used represents this change and evolution of ideas. Each time one word hits the side of the frame, it changes to another word, resembling ideas bouncing off the walls. Each piece of text represents a thought I had for the format of this publication: “weekly diary”, “photobook”, “letters”, “website”, and finally “gif”. When the “gif” text appears, the colours on screen invert to highlight me settling on this format.