Studio Practice
Define your values as a designer and communicate them through a designed artefact:
- Distill from your understanding of your practice, your character and your values as a designer (aspirational, honest, negative) make an initial list of 20 words that you can then edit down to five words.
- Create a visual mood board for each word.
- Create a single visual expression that conveys you (eg a film, 3D, typographic, an artefact or an experience.)
- Document your whole process and reflect upon it on your blog.
- Upload your five words and your final visual response to the ideas wall and a link to your blog.
Define your values as a designer and communicate them through a designed artefact:
- Distill from your understanding of your practice, your character and your values as a designer (aspirational, honest, negative) make an initial list of 20 words …
I asked for help from my friends and colleagues because they have a good measure of me and my work/design practice (and I can be overly self-critical) so here they are:
- Curious
- Growing
- Sensitive
- Stylish/elegant
- Ditzy
- Contradictory
- Clumsy
- Resourceful
- Inventive
- Honest
- Intelligent
- Thorough to the point of pedantry
- Professional
- Cryptic-thinker
- Anally retentive (thanks, Nic)
- Focussed
- No-nonsense
- Funny/witty
- Inappropriate
- Off the wall
To pick out the five words out of twenty, I used a technique I’ve seen used in UX/UI design to narrow them down. I’ve also seen the process used in team-building “team focus consultations” (as nauseating as it sounds), psychotherapy, and my flatmate helping me to figure out what qualities I would like in a boyfriend (when I find the photo, I promise to share). Because this is a design course, the UX/UI reason is obviously the most important.
For UX/UI design the words tend to focus on the services you would like the website or end product to perform, and for this, I used the twenty qualities I picked out. Usually, all the words would be written on identical pieces of paper to not give them a hierarchy, but I did some pre-sorting on different colours to create separation in my head, and to make the photo prettier. I had cut up a lot of paper into squares for a Mental Health Awareness Week “pick-me-ups” and the colours suited this too. Pink is roughly personal qualities, green is design, yellow is practice values.
I was in the pub waiting for my friends to arrive and played around with them, sorting into different collections that I felt went together: negatives, positives, eccentric:
I wrote down my five, and when my friends arrived, I devised a cruel game based on the boyfriend-quality picking exercise my flatmate did with me. As one friend put it: who brings homework to a pub quiz FOR OTHER PEOPLE TO DO? They indulged me, the course, and my self-absorption on understanding that it’s really evil to make someone pick out the five qualities they think most fit you, and that I shouldn’t ever try it again. Oops. Here are the results:
They all did the picking separately, and I distracted myself/went away from the table. I promised that I wouldn’t be insulted/hurt because these were words that I also agreed fitted me. I feel they have tried to be nice. It was interesting to see what they picked out, and the similarities and differences between them: one friend I’ve known since I was a child, one I met at university, one through friends and one through work.
Define your values as a designer and communicate them through a designed artefact:
- Compassion
- Conversation
- Curious
- Inventive
- Focussed.
FIVE WORDS
Define your values as a designer and communicate them through a designed artefact:
- Create a visual mood board for each word.
Compassion
Conversation
Curious
Inventive
Focussed
Define your values as a designer and communicate them through a designed artefact:
- Create a single visual expression that conveys you (eg a film, 3D, typographic, an artefact or an experience.)
SINGLE VISUAL EXPRESSION
This week I stumbled with timing and did not have time to create what I intended. This is a plan for my aims:
The text reads: A plan for a multimedia woven piece for Week 4. My words were conversation, focus, inventive, curiosity, compassion and this is a combination of them. The warp (vertical threads) are electrical wire,like used in communication technology and a thread is used to spell out the word artefect. Around this, the weft (horizontal) will be strips of paper from a shredder, probably made from emails at work. Even though when approaching a brief, it can feel like people are talking at cross-purposes, the answer can be in the tension focusing the thread into words. I’m curious to know how this will work out, and whether people will be able to read the word quickly!
As this was a project at the beginning of the module, perhaps I could have developed it more for the final project. However, I decided to keep on top of the rest of the work and let this stand as a concept rather than risk falling behind.
Anna Robinette 