The objective of the graphics blog was to develop skills as part of ongoing cultural and creative development, by documenting inspirational aspects if our lives. The brief certainly made me more aware of what was happening around me, it enabled me to step out of the student bubble and get a fresh perspective on things, whether in the creative world or not. When I received this brief I aimed to collect inspiration from a variety of sources, and I have achieved that, from artists, illustrators and designers to being inspired by the symmetry found in my keep fit class. I have drawn my inspiration form lots of different sources and experiences as I was forced to confront design on a day to day basis, especially when it is involved in current news, for example my entry on the review on the ban of product placement.
I have learned a lot about myself as a designer from this brief, what inspires me, what I hate, and what I have a tendency to fall back on. What inspires me tends to be current issues, this is because I feel that I can have my say, and respond in creative ways to stories such as Boris Johnson selling Christmas to Disney or Jordan getting dropped from Asda’s breast cancer campaign. I have also learned that I have very strong opinions and it is difficult to maintain a professional critic when personal views can easily override objectivity, this made me realise that perhaps nothing creative is completely objective, as personality leaks into everything a creative does. Though this is often a good thing as enables designers to develop a certain style, and this is what distinguishes them in their feild. I feel that my personal design style has not fully been developed yet; this is evident in my blog as I often refer to what other artists or designers are doing. The designer that has interested me the most is Timorous Beasties, the textile designers who I discovered in August during a work placement. They have a very distinct style with a deep and almost tactile quality to some of their prints, I also love the subverted messages they present through their work, when looking at one thing you are often see something different entirely.
This brief was also a personal learning experience, I learned that I enjoyed putting my thoughts on paper, and it was intriguing to read other people’s experiences and opinions of the things I was blogging about. Responding to other peoples blogs was useful as I learnt what styles I most responded to and was therefore able to gain knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable to me, for example when people blogged about what they had seen abroad or simply something that I had overlooked. This also enabled to build up a wealth of knowledge and the Glog has become an excellent place to conduct research for other projects. What hindered my while blogging was my spelling, I know I am a poor speller, though often wrote straight onto the blogger without checking my spelling, and though blogging is an informal action, when reading back over my blogs I found I was annoyed that I hadn’t taken the extra time to spell check my work, this came off as unprofessional. Though the spelling was wrong on only a few occasions I became much more aware of this problem and will ensure all words are spelt correctly in the future.
My work has been affected by this as I am realising new techniques and approaches, it has made me consider both hand rendered design and more web based projects, I am now able to see that a variety of styles can be used to tackle design problems and just because something will be finally produced digitally does not mean that some element of hand rendered design can not be incorporated. I will try to branch out the style in which I communicate in future projects, I am now aware of far more research facilities that I will use in future projects, I will also aim to draw my research from a wide variety of sources, as I have done for my blog. This will enable me to come up with diverse results in final artworks.
My independent project topic “the language of design” has evolved from my blog, I found that I was particularly interested in what things were said to me, and how they were said, this is evident in many blogs, such as “Talk to me”, “It’s Timmy Time” and “The book thief”. I am planning to further research into how the language of design is created through both copy, tone of voice and typography, specifically the casual chatty language I discuss in “Talk to me”, and what would happen if the language of serious and chatty products were mixed up.
Overall I think that I researched a wide range of sources and critically evaluated them well. I particularly enjoyed writing about my observations of day to day life, my blogs “Call on me” and “The suits” particularly make me laugh, though I feel I have addressed interesting issues, it is in these observations that I feel my personality most comes across. I have done this because I think it is important for creative people to put their own stamp on the world and by commenting on the working world and aerobics, I have not only began to do that, but began to understand what my views are on certain traits of society. This will be an important skill to develop as it will be very useful after I graduate and join society as a creative.
The graphics blog has helped my to develop my creative personality as well as becoming more aware of issues surrounding design, this will be helpful in both future projects and in extra curriculum activities.
