nathanthedesignstudent

[nathanthedesignstudent]

27 July 23

Hello all. 

I am updating this blog today having just finished my first essay draft. It feels great to have gotten to this point, following a huge amount of research and time spent forming my ideas and arguments. 

I find myself in the position of being 400-500 words over the word count and am struggling to decide which parts to reduce. I’m going to spend a couple of days away from the essay due to work commitments. I hope on rereading and with fresh eyes, it will become clear which elements have room for further refinement! I’m actually quite looking forward to this next stage refining and polishing the essay to ensure it is at its best before submission.

What I’ve found perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of writing this essay has been building an argument and curating my ideas in a persuasive and evidence-based manner, linking different concepts together and applying them to the context of our current modern-day practices as graphic designers. 

Perhaps the most challenging has been keeping track of and fully understanding each and every theoretical concept during my research phase. Whilst this has been challenging, it has also been hugely rewarding and hopefully afforded me a plethora of new concepts which I can use to better my practical design skills. It has also improved my vocabulary, which I hope will allow me to discuss my ideas with more freedom and appear slightly more credible when presenting to both clients and the wider industry. (However, that of course remains to be seen!) 

I feel in a good place with this submission but understand I have a lot more work and refinement left to do before I’m ready to submit. 

I look forward to updating this blog again once I have read through some of my peers’ blogs and shared our individual experiences. 

Until then, 

Best, 

Nathan 

[nathanthedesignstudent]

20 June 23 

I have just finished my submission for the first assessment for this project which was an annotated bibliography. After confirming with my tutor I was allowed 10% leeway on the 100-150 word limit for each annotation, I was left with 165 words per source. This proved challenging at times to cover all of the required topics in a coherent and more than surface-level manner. These topics included; 

The central theme and scope of the book or article

evaluate the authority or background of the author

Why I have included the book or article

Why it is useful and interesting to me and how it impacts on my research

Give a conclusive comment: Have the author(s) made any conclusions?

What methods were used for evaluation? 

I included a range of different sources from academic journals, essays and articles, published books and websites. 

Though the sources I have curated for this bibliography have, at times been challenging, I have really enjoyed spending the time getting to know both these texts and the philosophers behind them. 

Before starting this portion of research I felt I already had a reasonable knowledge of this topic and thus felt assured of the direction my essay might take. However, the more I researched and my knowledge base grew I realised all that I didn’t know and thus the direction and argument of my essay has now changed and evolved. This is great as I’m allowing my research to inform my essay, argument and findings, but perhaps slightly disconcerting at this point as I’m not a hundred percent sure of the exact title wording and structure my final essay will take. 

I’m really looking forward now to consolidating my learning and building a concise, focused essay with a strong argument. I believe my next steps will be to recap the core themes that I think are most pertinent to my topic and really nail down my argument armed now with a wealth of sources which I can use to support my claims. 

[nathanthedesignstudent]

3 June 23 

Over this last week I have begun the process of refining my essay topic choice. I have done this through; discussion with my tutor and peers, exploring different essay titles, constructions and deciding upon what perspective or stance I might like to take. 

I have decided to take forward the topic of limitation. I want to explore how its inclusion/deployment in our work as graphic designers in today’s modern society can add value. I find the idea that we can add some much value through just our design work alone fascinating. My goal in writing this essay is to gain a solid understanding of the power of limitation and how it has been used in the past and how i can deploy it most effectively in today’s society. I believe it is really important that I fully grasp this concept as I’m sure when I enter the graphic design world as a professional practitioner much of my success with be measured upon the value add I’m able to offer my clients. 

After exploring a way range of perspectives in order to explore what might what best for this topic, I have narrowed down my selection to the following four angles; Analytical, Argumentative, Identifying and Evaluative. 

I have also begun to carry out some initial reading around the topic. This led me to re-read Guy Debords ‘The Society of the Spectacle’. I have a very early theory that I might use as a core argument within my essay; ‘the spectacle’ has now morphed for millennials and Gen-Z. What was once ‘to be seen to have’ has transitioned to ‘being seen to have experienced’ because of the economic climate that we’ve grown up in. Perhaps more in this in later posts as my idea matures… 

So far I feel off to a good start and am slowly starting to bring my essay’s direction into focus. 

[nathanthedesignstudent]

22 May 23

Hello world, 

I’m a graphic design student currently studying for a BA Hons whilst finishing his career as a musician. Finally starting my final year, today marks the start of my next module – ‘Critical and Cultural Studies Level 6: Degree Essay’. In this blog, I shall be documenting my process of writing this essay and reflecting on the importance of many different sources I find to build my arguments and body of research. 

I’m currently interested in ‘Aura’ as defined by Walter Benjamin in his seminal text, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of the Mechanical Reproduction’. I would like to explore the value or merit of building limitations in the accessibility of art in today’s landscape. How and why we might want to create, deploy and limit access to ‘Aura’ as a tool to create value in our work as practitioners and understand the cultural, social, institutional and economic ramifications of doing so. 

A few example of some practitioners/artists and even collectors who it could be argued are already exploring this topic are as follows;    

Damien Hirst – The Currency 

A fascinating live experiment which explored our relationship with the NFT (Non-Fungible Token). Exploring how value is attributed through limitation and core principles of belief and in Hirst as a public figure, an artist and now, as a founder of a ‘currency’. (HENI. 2022.)

PleasrDAO – DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations)

PleasrDAO is a collective of 74 members whose aspiration is to create art communities through the purchase, curation and joint ownership of NFTs. They present themselves as a charitable service which buys NFTs in order to display them to the world which sounds like a positive. However, they’re also actively participating and promoting this medium which is highly restrictive in nature and another step towards the privatisation of our once ‘Aura-less’ digital landscape. (Delphi Media, 2021)

Oliver Jeffers – The Dipped Painting Project

A project which sees Jeffers privately paint portraits before displaying them to small groups of 15-20 people in an intermit ritualistic type ceremony before dipping the work in enamel. Limiting the work’s accessibility in such a manner that 15-20 testimonies are the sole archive of its unobstructed image. (Jeffers , O., 2021)

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Benjamin, W., 2008. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Translated by Underwood, J. A., Penguin Group

Delphi Media, 2021. PleasrDAO is Collecting Internet Culture (The Doge NFT, Wu-Tang Clan Album, Edward Snowden NFT). [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaBLJPLGUtY [Accessed 22 May 2023].

HENI. 2022. THE CURRENCY. [online] Available at: <https://currency.nft.heni.com/info&gt; [Accessed 22 May 2023].

Jeffers , O., 2021. The dipped painting project, Oliver Jeffers. Available at: https://www.oliverjeffers.com/oliver-jeffers (Accessed: 22 May 2023).