lxlkaraz

[lxlkaraz]

Each artist has their own vision, goals and values - artistic vision statement. Artistic vision statement is what defines who the artist is and shapes their future. When it comes to me, I also have my own artistic vision statement :

Returning back to my artistic vision statement, I have mentioned my desire to help young Kazakh designers in their artistic journey and I think it’s one of the few examples of the type of social engagement I want to do.

One of the examples from my country which truly resonates with me and with artistic statement is an instagram account of several Kazakh young individuals. And the reason why is, it really resonates with me because for a long period of time I never saw someone who shares the same passion towards design in my country. They became someone who I could finally relate to and for many others like me. It’s almost like their account became a safe space for Kazakh designers to share their knowledge, experience and feelings. This often leads to a domino effect, where one strong individual pushes others to create and those creating more inspiring artists who repeat the cycle.

Which is the reason why I truly want to have my own platform to share my knowledge I have taken from Singapore and make my knowledge accessible. To be apart of this cycle and inspire someone who is just like me who is willing to do big steps one day

Does this plan still hold its ground in the future? Absolutely. I have been having my own “artistic statement” in my mind for several years now, to the point I am really committed to UX/UI design. Knowing what I truly love and being committed to that niche, gives me a lot of ideas on what I would like to talk about and gives me a clear roadmap of my topics. Another major reason why I think it will still hold its ground in the future is because currently we can see the trend of short content like reels and tiktok. This is a game changer when it comes to educational content because often people love videos that go straight to the point and storing and bookmarking your short videos are often helpful

To sum up, for my artistic vision, my main belief is that knowledge should be successful and my main goal is to be able inspire people around me to create beautiful stuff. Following my inspiration from other young kazakh content creators, I will achieve my goals with my own content

493 words

#design #socialengagement

[lxlkaraz]

Each designer whether they know it or not has their own manifesto. During this exercise, we had to work in groups in order to visualize them. As every designer has different views and experiences, each design approach differs from others, so we all agreed to write down our manifestos. Personally I think this choice perfectly shows the depth of a design manifesto. By each manifesto being personal, let’s discuss what my manifesto comprises of :

“No matter what, start”: As a designer our greatest friend and foe will be our mind. We often create based on and because of the abilities of our mind and yet we as much as often restrict ourselves from creation. As an example, during my craft I often restricted myself from being free. The teacher told me “How are you ever gonna find out if it's truly bad if you don’t start?” This moment made me realize that in order to ease our restrictions we just have to start no matter what and thus I finally started designing. It didn’t matter what exactly I was trying to do, but exchanging my ideas back and forth gave me a foundation to work with.

“Empathy is key”: As a designer, we should often be mindful of whom we design for. We often may design in a tunnel vision with thoughts of creating how we please, but for each design sphere there are certain goals that we have to follow. As I mentioned before by each manifesto being personal, as an UX/UI designer I think it's crucial that we should be more mindful about the user’s experience. In others words be more empathetic

Last but not least, “broaden your horizons”: Unfortunately the whole art industry is a serious and fast competition. Trends go back and forth and we often have to adapt in order to stay relevant. One of the most recent examples is the usage of AI in the design industry. As much as we question the moral aspects of AI, we also have to be more understanding about its usage and be more mindful on how and where to use it. Which is why we always have to broaden our horizons in order to keep relevancy

If I were to change our group manifesto, I would try to summarize each of our own experiences into one. We all share the same struggle when it comes to design and often our greatest enemy is our own mind. So in the end I would summarize in one sentence: “The designers greatest foe and savior is their own mind”

To sum up, a manifesto is a good interpretation of a person's experience and values and as designers we often share the same experience of struggle. I hope each of our manifesto will reach out to the depth of a person's heart helping them to get through what we have got through

Word Count: 481

#design #manifesto #criticalthinking

[lxlkaraz]

Week 3

Connecting Practice with Soiciety

As a designer, our goal is to communicate. Being able to communicate through visuals opens up the ability to connect our practices with society. Being a designer myself, I often feel that I have a responsibility to use my communication design to issues that bother my vicinity. It can be local issues or even social problems.

Luckily, Brand Parody has offered me a chance to communicate about those said issues and give my contribution into solving it.

As someone who is not very secure about his looks, I see the issue of overconsumption of beauty-care products. Speaking from my experience, I once got forced to visit a beauty shop. The way they advertised my product was through my insecurity, by shoving really high-quality mirror into the spots I didn’t even felt bad about before

My Brand Parody “Clair” wants to give a message I wish I could have given myself before : “To be transparent with yourself”

My idea is to give people a “placebo” product that doesn’t actually do anything. If people feel improvements on themselves it’s them being more content with themselves

I used graphics to highlight my message, by making mockups and packaging of my brand

In conclusion, being able to communicate through visuals opens up many opportunities to connect your practice with society and contribute to solving local or global issues

(224 words)

Credits:

Viktor Hertz on Flickr (Imagery of Brand Parody)

#brandparody #branding #society #practice #socialawareness

[lxlkaraz]

Week 4-5

Field Trip + Analyse Artistic Traditions and Lineages

During field trip in National Gallery, we had to do our independent analyse of exhibition. This helped us in better knowledge of able to find and work with context of environment

During this trip, my attention went on art named “National Language Class”. This piece hold significance to the exhibition and in order to understand it, we should dive in into the historical context behind this art

The historical context what gives this significance and value because after deeper understanding of context we can relate towards details of the art

Context also matters for the visual. For example, context defines why this art piece is made in social realism. After gaining right for self-govern, this resulted in mindfulness amongst people. This created a movement where people would draw surrounding in social realism because “art should reflect reality”

This sends us back to the Studio, where we have to design a festival for existing brand. This field trip was a good way to show us on how to identify and research the context and why it matters

As an example, the festival I took is baybeats. All my works that I have done didn’t correspond with a baybeats. And the reason for this is lack of understanding the context, where the context is that baybeats is not just a music festival but a rock festival

To summarise, context and analysis can be used in design, which can be essential step that you cannot skip given in the right conditions and situations

(250 words)

Credits for National Singapore Gallery for perserved art

#selfidentity #festivalvisuals #context #artistictraditionsandlineages #graphicdesign #history

[lxlkaraz]

Week 1

Creative Practice and Critical Thinking

In today’s lesson what really stood out to me is “how critical thinking can be creative”. This question brought me many other questions like “Is there correlation between critical thinking and creativity?”

In order to answer this question let’s define critical thinking and creativity

The most common interpretation of critical thinking is when the process of analysis and reflections integrate into belief or action.

While creativity is the ability to generate ideas and alternatives that may be useful in solving problems.

Both definitions result into solving a problem or taking actions. This is the main correlation between these two. In fact, there is more than correlation between these two, and it’s rather codependency. Let me reason why.

As designers our main goal is to solve problems. The first step into solving a problem is identifying one.

Let’s take today’s studio activity as main example. Our main task was to make main slide for our course. The first step before we make our design is analyse our situation and identify our problem. In our situation our main problem is to attract attention of students into the title and hook of the main course with limited tools

As we identified problems we can now use creativity to solve the problem. If not for our critical thinking, we would generate ideas that would not reflect on our problem and go to wrong direction

Our problem right now is to grab attention of our students. Which is why the clear hierarchy is needed, while highlighting our hook phrase

(254 words)

#criticalthinking #graphicdesign #creativity #practice #theory

[lxlkaraz]

Summary

The World of Ideas and Imagination, was a great starting point for us a designers to learn and understand, our designs from the more different perspectives, as how others view and perceive our work, and what idea or meaning lies behind my work and use as a tool

Starting from each different lessons, we learned different philosophy concepts that helped us to be more empathetical on what we do, and understand the true purpose of what we do

To be able do that we can use concepts, aesthetics, postmodernism as our tool to achieve one or different experiences for an user

In a conlusion, I think World of Ideas and Imagination were helpful by making students question and giving us debating feeling of either is that truly what we want to do or not inside of us, which is in my way is helpful feeling. At many times during lesson the only question I asked myself is: "Is that what I want to do?". In the end, I realised that upon completing this course everyone realised what designer they want to be and there is no right or wrong question for that. Personally, I wanna be more practical, and functional designer who can mix creativity and engagement

[lxlkaraz]

Week 11

Post-Modernism

Postmodernism is often depicted as art of breaking rules, but before stating it, let’s see the history of this ideology, and what links it back to it

Modernism came into history first, In the early 20th century. Modernism was a response to the hidebound past which gave us gave us art deco, Mondrian, Rothko, the Chrysler building and more.

40 years later, existentialism comes to the history. Existentialism is depicted as philosophical movement that explores the issue of human existence

Postmodernism is a stance characterized by skepticism for elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the modernism, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning

So now we have reviewed it , we can resum history to help us understand this matter more properly and precise:

modernism: Meaning is a new thing that we create as we form the world under scientific principles Existentialism: Meaning is manipulative bullshit in service of ideology Postmodernism: Meaning is wherever we find or invent it, and is endlessly fluid. There is always meaning, but it’s never fixed

But why I have brought up to this? Meaning is a subjective term, there is no right or wrong meaning. Which means everyone can seek their own meaning and apply it in their works The 1 Semester studio work perfectly showcases it. During type practice, we learned about golden goblet and crystal goblet. This poem went ahead of this time and showed as a debate between golden and crystal goblet

But I ultimately decided that there is no wrong or right meaning, which is what I tried to show in my works

My references:

[lxlkaraz]

Week 10

Post-Structuralism

Post-Structuralism is a concept that define that “truth” is not a fixed concept. In a sense, In my opinion experience and emotions defines and bends the truth and the image of the object

The History is great example to show how image of something changed during historical experiences and human’s view in the world

Which is why let’s explore the Image of Death and Goddess

Why did this happen? First the experience, humanity changed the goddess into Medusa to declare its win againts the nature. It shows how experience can change the way we see the world

But there is also an emotional reasoning as well, to show how even if we defeat the nature, we will never defeat the death. A fear of nature bended into fear of death

The difference is History answers when did the change happen and from what action, where culture tells as why and how

The knowledge of this will come pretty handy in Image Narrative module. Each word has a different meaning to different people, which means even if the Author wrote a poem in one meaning, post-structuralism argues this meaning will be different to others

Why is this important? In my case the poem is about the sun, but the image of the sun is different in different countries and I can use for my own need

History is not the only one example of post-structuralism, cultural difference also shows us on how different images observed differently due to the culture

The references:

[lxlkaraz]

Week 4 & 5

Week 4

Since the start of my adventures as graphic designer, I realised that from the start I have been practicing unique curve of studying, which consist of constant stealing and analysis. I usually made my designs by stealing ideas from 3 references that I liked. Later one to my shocking I found quote that fits that practice well “3 stolen ideas creates new fresh idea” and “good artist copy, great artist steal”

Let’s implement this technique into studio

See how I quickly managed to take 3 ideas and implement it into 1 card? If it was that easy, then everyone could be designer, which is why it is important to steal smart not blindly Whenever I steal idea, I must know its, the purpose of it; it meaning and matter. When it comes to technical side, I must understand its; choice of the medium, aspects and forms. Bottom line idea is, being designer is not easy, we are not ai machines and capable stealing someones art with prior understanding to its nature and purpose and grow from it, even greatest artists stolen their art from the mother nature

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Week 5

During museum trip there are quite few designs that intrigued me

During a Singapore History design hall I have been noticing strange phenomena. Whats caught my attention is how design is deeply correlated with the moment during history. As an example during war designs turned out to be more bold and featuring more red colors than usual. This ultimately reminded me back into phenomenology and linked back on how experiences can alter design

Since we started talking about phenomenology. The second thing that caught my attention how design started simplifying over the age. Or how design can alter experience

Upon going from the start of history till the modern day, I began noticing that designs becoming more simplistic over the age My own very best explanation of it is that design is always about experience and communication first. Which is why at the age of globalisation, where every countries starts to become identical, it is only logical to design become identical via simplifying the message with unnecessary details. By following the philosophy of “less is more,” designs now tend breathe and communicate with a clarity that captivates the senses

[lxlkaraz]

Week 2. Aesthethics

Today we have concluded that aesthetic is the quality of something that makes you feel a certain way about it. Coincidentally in this week of studio, we have also learned about style and concept So logically I have raised a question upon myself. What is the difference between style, concept, and aesthetic Before we start discussing, first we must distinguish the difference between concept and style. The concept is the idea of a design, but to be more specific the core of the design. When the style is how you convey the story

Now when we have seen the difference between these two, it can be easily concluded that those two terms are very apart from each other. But many may notice similarities between style and aesthetic. Both have similar functions by making you feel a certain mood or emotion So what is the difference, to simplify my answer let's take a look at my studio work. Each student has a designer, to make cards about him. So in this case my aesthetic would be Evan Hecox. So aesthetics answers whom or what I am trying to convey. Evan Hecox known for his different art styles so style is how you can convey him

Knowing this knowledge, I can arrange my plans like that:

Concept: Card that gives people information of who is Evan Hecox by jsut looking

Aesthethic (of what?): Card, Evan Hecox

Style(How?): Handdrawn, Simplistic, Measures of cards

End result:

To conclude the big difference between those two is the question that you ask before making it. The "what" I wanna convey and "how" I wanna convey

Research link: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-difference-between-art-and-aesthetic

[lxlkaraz]

Week 1. Phenomenology

I think many designers underestimate the importance of phenomenology. The truth is phenomenology is a key concept for designs and you might be using the power of the philosophy of experience unintentionally in your daily designs

Last semester, I unintentionally linked phenomenology and design in my research. Since phenomenology established that people see the same constant object differently due to their experience, we can wield this knowledge into our hands.

In this research I have highlighted that fonts, colors, and layout are designers tool to change the experience of the user, those changing perception of the product

The most popular example of how color could change the experience of a user would be road signs. Have you ever wondered why most of the signs are red? Phenomenology explains that our experience can conceptualize the seen object and interpret it. The shaped idea can be crafted not only by our experience but the common experience or cultural preunderstandings. In nature, bold colors especially red mean danger for animals which is why it commonly awakens our instincts when we see red, which as a result awakens strong emotions regarding that color. Since the road signs' intention is to warn something urgently and give them an idea of taking immediate action, red is the best candidate among other colors

If we link everything in one point, we can conclude that knowledge of phenomology is commonly used amongst many designers and it what helps designs has it purpose in this world

Research references:

https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/perception-in-arthttps://artincontext.org/why-does-art-involve-experience/

#phenomenology