Week 12: Designs for Launch of Authorial Artefact

THe Tasks

• Research and investigate how designers and makers publicise their activities or products, and the media organisations and business platforms that will be a mouthpiece for the PR and marketing of your initiative.
• Design and create a prototype or series of prototypes, in the media of your choice, through fast iteration, testing and development, to help an audience or business partner see the potential of your proposition.
• Create and communicate a one page outline or short video of next steps, and even production partners, to support any future development.

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Research and investigate how designers and makers publicise their activities or products.

I’m going to focus on how community projects are publicised through the community and then in the wider world…

Zetteler, as mentioned in the lecture, definitely has some community projects …

Vernacular Typography

Searching for typography community projects, one stuck out to me: Vernacular Typography. It is “a non-profit photo archive and community-based initiative dedicated to the documentation and preservation of rapidly vanishing examples of lettering in the everyday environment.” It was set up by Molly Woodward to capture everyday typography inspired by a trip to Cuba. There was also a kickstarter campaign:

I really love how she described her project, and it fits between this and my collaborative tool, Filo’type. The main website has errors and doesn’t load, but some parts on the blog domain still function. There are a few hiatus, and then she picks up posting over the Corona-virus epidemic and Black Lives Matter protests.

The instagram page is followed by lots of mainstay typography accounts like letteringdaily and abctypography and has nearly 7,000 followers. I feel like Woodward has moved on somewhat from this as the last post is from 2018.

The media organisations and business platforms that will be a mouthpiece for the PR and marketing of your initiative.

There are two levels of marketing that I need to engage in for this project. Firstly, the people in the community with whom I want to engage and secondly, to share the outcomes with people. The two audiences require different techniques that overlap in some situations and on timelines. 

To engage people in the project, I need to be more focussed on the community. It is geographic in audience, so the strategy needs to be geared to that. For the initial market research survey, I decided to print out posters with tear off tags that I distributed around local places to pique the interest of people in the area. I also contacted Facebook groups based in the area, hobnobbed friends and colleagues in the area, and their contacts. and sent an email to Artillery Arts, a local arts facilitator.

On the survey, I created a field where people could enter their email address if they were interested in hearing more. At the end of the week, when this is handed in, I will email these people to thank them for their contribution and give them an update of my plans. This will form an ongoing email newsletter.

I need to expand my audience base. From here, I plan to contact more local community structures, such as places of worship and charity to learn how to reach more people. I am to gain more qualitative feedback before proposing my project.

I intend to engage more people through partnerships that I will forge. Firstly, I want to get in with Artillery Press as they have a huge following and we will be able to mutually help each other,. Then, with the Mills Community Space where I hope to hold the first workshops. For production of the publication, I would like to partner with Paekarikiriki Press, the local letterpress studio, and Rabbit Road Press, riso printers, so that we can work together and promote the project.

Throughout this, I am to be in touch online with people and establishing a respected presence online in the Facebook groups. I plan to write small articles for Waltham Forest Echo, the local newspaper with photos of the workshops to include people in later stages of the process. There are some non-English language local newspapers too, and I’ll try to do them same in them.

The overlap between the two audiences will be social media and a website. I am personally not keen on Facebook, but given that there are several groups on there, I will have to consider setting up a business page as a hub for information. On Instagram, I will set up a page where I can share content from the project as it goes along and calls for action. I will also make a hashtag so that people can share their own content too.

To advertise the project, I can use the content that has been collected from the sessions, such as videos and photos (permission given, of course) taken by a professional to send out as press. The Instagram page will have a natural wealth of content from the project and give it gravitas. Setting up a website will provide content to the press – such as a press section, names of contributors and details where to buy the publication.

In the same way that Alec suggested in his lecture, reaching out to people with ready made content seems like a great way to go. I’d need someone to help me write (thank God I can usually ask editors to proof read) and maybe I can ask people on the project to write about what they’ve done.

Next year I will qualify for the D&AD New Blood Awards, and provided that there is a suitable category I will submit the project in the awards and for a showcase in the exhibition.

For this project, I think that hiring a PR agency will be overkill and exceed the budget. However having quality images to send out is essential so I will include budget for a photographer/videographer to capture the project to send out to press and to record it as it goes.

Design and create a prototype or series of prototypes, in the media of your choice, through fast iteration, testing and development, to help an audience or business partner see the potential of your proposition.

My authorial artefact is a framework, and a framework that depends on a project that I can’t complete in a week. The outcomes depend on the community workshops … so I need to think about this for a bit.

/Later

I made a tiled image of lots of different doodled letters to illustrate the PDF and show how much letters can vary:

And then I mocked up how a publication could look without influencing the outcome too much:

Create and communicate a one page outline or short video of next steps, and even production partners, to support any future development.

Advertisement

Chat with Tectonic

When I saw that Nana Parry was offering free one-to-one sessions to new businesses I signed up. Granted, I might have not have been who he was expecting when he set up his scheme, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

The advice I sought from him wasn’t to do with this presentation as it is too late in the schedule to change without impacting other submissions. Instead, I asked him for advice with how to carry this idea into the real world.

He liked that I had identified the three separate target users as a starting point and that now I can drill down more into their needs. Right now, the project is based on assumptions, which he said was fine, and now I need to validate those assumptions.

I need to step aside from the idea and. work out who needs it most and who needs it regularly and to go into as much depth as possible. He suggests speaking to users without showing them the project so that I don’t ;ed their answers and create a product that truly answers their needs.

CNVS.online

One resource he suggested that I look at is CNVS.online which is a tool to develop Strategyzer-like business canvasses and a way to create a one page business plan.

Although they focus on different media, he suggested that I look at the company journey of Unsplash to see where they started and how they got there. Nana appreciated that what I am trying to do focuses directly on typography and agrees that could seem restrictive, but I should make that focus a strength of the platform.

Right now I’m a little too burnt out and concerned about focussing on the final week to action his points. I am so glad that I took a chance to make the connection and will work on the project. He said that he’d like to hear from me in the future, so that’s good, right?

Week 11: Challenge

How can you ensure a business / creative idea is targeted and researched to maximise potential?

• Select one of your ideas from the previous week and develop a clear business outline of your intended audience outlets for distribution or purchase.
• You may need to evolve aspects of the proposition, and ensure there is a clear objective for the next stages of development.
• Your output will include product development, research insights and production challenges; all of which will come together in the final week of this module.
• Upload the artefact and evidence of any development undertaken (this might also include brand names and approach to the product’s story), and include a one page report outlining research, insights and development challenges.

Idea chosen

Walthamstow Typeface design: For Walthamstow, by Walthamstow

This is more than designing a typeface for Walthamstow: the objective is engage the community in the creation of a means of communication that reflects them and to have a discussion about how type influences how we feel about the content it displays.

The project starts with a series of workshops, each aimed at a different demographic, where we talk about the elements of type and our experiences of living in the area. We will go on to experiment with how we can encapsulate our thoughts in letterforms and go on to design our own glyphs.

From there, I will go on to design a body typeface and a display typeface that embody the themes talked about in the sessions. The typeface can be used by participating members free of charge for personal use, and can be purchased for any commercial usage.

The typeface will be shown to the community to gauge reactions and invite people to contribute pieces of writing about Walthamstow. In collaboration with Paekarikiriki Press, the typeface will be cast so that it can typeset the writing into a publication. Members of the community will typeset pieces at Paekarikiriki Press, allowing them to experience how books are made. The publication will be available for sale at local businesses to help fund the project.

The project will form the basis of the framework, where it can be refined and packaged as a community venture that can be applied in any location and as a commercial product that is sold as a tool for companies to understand their audience.

Evolution and Objectives

This started just as a typeface project called W’stow.otf, but has now developed into a framework called Stowe Framework so that it can be transported to different areas.

The goals for this project are community-based …  

• Engage the community in typeface design, letterpress and book publishing;
• Run workshops for people to create glyphs of a typeface together;
• Explore how typography is used in the Walthamstow area;
• Facilitate conversations about how typography can shape how we view our space;
• Foster communications between community and creative spaces;
• Showcase the communities’ experiences in a piece of written work.

… and will have physical outcomes:

• Latin-script body typeface and display typeface, based on workshops, for use by the community;
• Publication of writings on the local area, set at a local letterpress studios;
•  Online tool where people can select display characters from the workshops to write “Walthamstow” and share online.
• Framework that can be taken to other communities and sold to companies for as an experience-based session to enable them to understand their customers better.

Product development

Name

The original name for the project, W’stow.otf came from a shortening of Walthamstow and the typeface file name suffix of Open Type Font – because the font would be open to be designed and used by all.

After transforming the project to a framework, it has been renamed as Stowe Framework. I have chosen to make it non-location specific, and kept the Stowe. The word Stowe/or Stow derives from Old/Middle English as a way to describe a holy or meeting place. Bristol was originally “Bridge stow”, or meeting place by the bridge. I hope that the project and typeface will serve as a meeting place for people of a community,

ReseaRch insights

Quantative

I am going to run a survey asking people who live in Walthamstow a few questions. Here is the Google Forms I set up:

https://forms.gle/t43NdzeL3vmhni1MA

I would have liked to, as Dan Parry suggested in the lecture, set up a questionnaire that uses logic jumps so that I can drill down into certain answers and with people only answering questions applicable to them. However, TypeForm is too expensive for one survey and does not allow such features on the free version.

Distribution

I am a member of a number of Facebook groups for the Walthamstow area, and have posted on them asking for people to help me out. I don’t have much traction with the groups yet, but I hope people will be willing to help.

I also have some friends in the area, and I’ve asked them to help me out by answering and distributing the survey.

I am also going to distribute posters around places I know where people might be interested, and make it varied so that a wide a selection of people as possible are surveyed.

Production Challenges

It’s ambitious

Oh yes it is! This is not a simple project: this has many different stages and facets that need to work together. I will tackle these by breaking everything into stages with a schedule and plans to clearly communicate to participants and partners.

Talking of partners …

I’d like to team up with Artillery Arts, Rabbit Road Press and Paekarikiriki Press so that it is truly community-based. Artillery Arts have a strong base in the area and facilitate projects regularly. RRP and PP are riso and letterpress printers respectively and I hope they will be part of this so that the publication can be produced. I need to make contact with this organisations soon to build a basis of the project.

Have you ever designed a typeface before?

Well … no. Not completely. To produce this I need to get my education hat on ASAP to learn and to sign up to masterclasses where my work can be refined and critiqued.

Have you ever run a session at this scope before?

Nope. I’m nervous about running workshops, but I can’t progress to be the designer I want to be working the projects I want to work on without starting somewhere. I will enlist the help of my arts facilitator flatmate to structure and run sessions.

How are you going to attract people to come?

I’m hoping the survey will at least make people aware that something is happening, and start to build a following through partners and social media.

What about Covid-19? How are you going to keep people safe?

This project is community-based and needs people to meet in some way or another. Ideally, this would be in person, but I need to make this safe. I would run workshops at the Mill, a community space, and have reduced numbers and safety precautions.

In your survey you mention running sessions for children. How are you planning to keep them safe?

Running sessions for children, and any adults too, requires safeguarding. I would apply for a DRB check and provide all details, and invite their carer to come with them.

Finally, finances. How are you going to pay for it?

I can’t self-finance this, and so I would build the project to make it eligible for funding from the National Lottery, Arts Council and see if there is any local funding. I don’t want to charge people to come to the sessions or contribute. The publication will be available for sale, which will help finance the project and the created typeface will be free for personal use, but charged for commercial and online use.

One page report

Personal Branding

In my Businss Plan, my imagined business name is Studio Anna. I like the name because of its palindromic nature and that it can be stacked into a square and be read any which way.

I did come up with this logo, but think that it is too static even with some distortion:

I’ve been sketching and playing around with upper and lower case letter forms:

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The bottom left is supposed to be like the double bars of the semiquaver music note, but it doesn’t work as well as the others.

The others work and I can imagine animating them into transforming them from one to another to give a dynamic feel to the studio.

Work to progress…

Week 10: Designer, Author, Maker

Tasks

• Research, analyse and comment on the role of designer as author and as maker.
• Imagine and communicate 10 initial ideas for a series of outputs you could make as an author.

Ideas

One) Building a typeface for Walthamstow, created by the community in workshops.

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Two) Creating books and film props based on the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. It would involve writing substantial amounts of content and devising ingenious ways of displaying it

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Three) An anthropological look at the village pantomime and community, based on my own childhood

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Grandfather, father, brother

Four) Profiling makers of the Robinette and Turner family, the birth of the Al-Turner-tive Prize and the history of Huguenots

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Five) Cee Em Wye and Kay – an extension of a project for History and Applications last module. A children’s story about the CMYK printing process and half-tones

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Six) Building a typeface based on knitting stitches. Why? Because it came to me in a dream one night

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Seven) Mapping my runs of London and significant places to me for different reasons. Done in a Street View setting so you can see significant routes

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Eight) Investigating how to make an ideal exhibition for people on the Autistic Spectrum, with an example virtual exhibition to display the findings

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Nine) Going back to maps… using contour lines to map out and define what is important to you. There are a few peaks, ie friends, family work. The most important things in those categories go in the highest contour line, and gradually radiate out and merge.

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Ten) Hidden in plain si(gh)te. An augmented reality game based on trade craft and ciphers hidden out in the open for people to discover and solve in their local streets.

Week 9: Challenge

The Challenge

• Create an information graphic, or diagram, or animation that, for you, highlights the effective definition and process of a being a design entrepreneur today.
• Upload your diagram to the Ideas Wall and discuss the pros and cons of how risk, failure and innovation is built into a model for business success;
• What is the impact of different cultural insights with regard to opportunity and potential?

“DESIGN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS THE COLLECTION OF CORRECT SKILLS AND ABILITIES TO DEVELOP THE RIGHT IDEAS AND MARKET THEM AS SUCCESSFUL DESIGN PRODUCTS … [INCLUDING] EXECUTIVE RESPONSIBILITY, BUSINESS PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING ISSUES”

(GUNES, 2012)

The traditional design process has the designer working for a client, who holds the problem, to find a solution that fits the client’s specification. This holds some advantages for the designer because it allows them to practise their design skills and concentrate on the creative side of problem-solving. All the other tasks of positioning, financing, managing and marketing fall under the responsibility of the client, thus freeing the designer of the hindrance. However, the lack of responsibility is also a lack of power: the designer does not have any control other than what they have been briefed to do.

The situation I have described above is where design entrepreneurship comes in. It allows the designer to take control and assume responsibility for the full breadth of the project and provides a more holistic experience for those involved.

Design entrepreneurship projects are initiated for a number of reasons, as a student creating a self-initiated project giving themselves the voice of an imaginary client and their response to best show their skills, an experienced designer following an idea outside of their usual briefs or as a conscious decision of a company to embark on these ventures. It could be any combination of these situations and people, however, the common element is that the business skills are undertaken by the designer in addition to the creative tasks.

I would imagine that the process of developing a design entrepreneurship project (DEP) take on a very similar timeline to any other project, however, the tasks are completed by the same person or company.

First, the idea has to be conceived: the designer has the chance to use their own knowledge of their world to empathise with an audience and build a project around that. It gives them the power to draw boundaries of the project and lead in the development.

At the same time, the designer has to manage the financing, product planning, positioning and marketing, which are skills they might not have had to consider in a pure design role. However, these skills are essential to design entrepreneurship and requires the designer to gain additional skills adjacent to their project and thoroughly connect to the world in which their project is being launched. It challenged the designer to place their project in context and make the executive decisions over such balances such as quality vs cost.

The knowledge gained in producing design entrepreneurship projects will enable the designer to work with new perspective as they understand the cogs working around them.

There does remain the question of authorship if a DEP is undertaken by a company or studio. Does the project have to be under the remit of one person, or can responsibility be shared in a company?

With regards to cultural insights and how they can impact opportunity and potential, I think cultural insights could either help or hinder a project. For a designer to come in with fresh eyes might invigorate a situation because they are able to see the issue from a different perspective. This could lead to startling and innovative solutions that would otherwise not have been conceived due to ‘situation blindness’. On the other hand, knowledge of the situation means that the designer can apply an appropriate solution well.

Infographic

I’ve been thinking about how to represent design entrepreneurship in an easy way, that’s also novel. I don’t want to spend too much time on this week so I can concentrate on the larger project for Brief 3. When the week’s challenge mentions animation I thought oooooooooh what can I do, knowing I can complicate things easily.

Spending some time this evening to practise After Effects following a Domestika course has led to this:

animation

I imagine creative skills and business skills being on two different sides, or axis, fundamentally different but coming together. I see this as weaving fabric. In a traditional design brief, the client forms the warp (vertical) to provide the structure whilst the designer is the weave, (horizontal), making the pattern:

from Wikipedia

Lego man evolution

Or I like the idea of putting together an entrepreneur and a designer forming different lego figures from blocks and putting them together to create a mega figure called the design entrepreneur.

Tripod

Or thinking of design entrepreneurship as three different corners to form a triangle, all essential in order to be a DE.

Or reinventing the wheel in a new combination?

Final Outcome

Resources

• Gunes, S., 2012. Design Entrepreneurship in Product Design Education. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 51, pp.64-68. (Gunes, 2012)
• https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/entrepreneurship-through-design
• creativereview.co.uk/entrepreneur-nick-hussey-on-surviving-boom-and-bust/

Week 8: Critical Presentation and pitch reflection

pitch deck

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Slide commentary

Slide 1 – Open

Hi everyone! Welcome to my pitch to present my digital tool to enable collaboration. Last week you saw my elevator pitch introducing filo’type and here I am going to go into further details.

Slide 2 – Contents

I will tell you about the project, the users I am aiming for, similar products and the opportunities for collaboration during development. Then I will take you through the potential feature modules before showing you my development plan. Let’s get going!

Slide 3 – About

The digital tool is aimed at people interested in typography to enable them to capture, catalogue and reference type examples for their future projects. It will build a collaborative library to expand horizons and save time in the research of projects.

Slide 4 – Users

I am focussing on three consumer segments, namely typophiles, which is anyone interested in type and its history, set designers who build fantastic worlds for audiences in films, theatre and TV; lastly, type designers who create new typefaces for clients. This is a summary that looks at the users.

Slide 5 – Users 2

Here is a more detailed look at the Consumer Segments and the jobs, pains and gains for each group. The information is based on assumptions at the moment. At the bottom, I have listed questions to which I want to find answers.

I need to do further work to validate the assumptions about the consumer segments I have already made. It may be that the project and features shift slightly to accommodate the feedback.

I plan to form focus groups to isolate the issues each group face and propose solutions.

Through the development stages, I plan to collaborate by continually testing and developing with the users to meet the goals of the project.

Slide 6 – Market Research

I have looked into other digital tools that have a feature overlap with my tool. Firstly, social media sites such as Pinterest and Instagram can act as discovery and archive tools. However, even with hashtags filtering content, they are not explicitly built for type and posts cannot be viewed geographically.

Type resources such as Fonts In Use have grown to be able to identify typefaces in other people’s work. It is a useful archive that enables the identification of fonts but doesn’t show examples you would see walking down the street and doesn’t present the context in which the work was created.

I want to incorporate Augmented Reality Technology into the digital tool, and Adobe Fontphoria is a brilliant example of using machine learning to extrapolate a whole typeface that the user can project into an AR space. Those features alone don’t match what I am trying to do, and no context is provided to the new typefaces made.

Slide 7 – Collaboration 1

When I look at the features that I want to include, there are opportunities to collaborate with others throughout the development process. I have mapped these opportunities onto the Double Diamond process on the next slide.

Slide 8 – Collaboration 2

At the Discover Stage, I want to validate my consumer segment values and draw further wisdom from my users and consult with a company like Metier Digital to build a solid structure for the tool.

At the Define stage, I need to consult with lawyers that specialise in copyright and intellectual property because features such as distributing others’ work might breach some laws. By considering this at an early stage, I can mould the exact features so that they do not contravene any laws before it gets to the development stage.

At the Development stage, I imagine including many more people. Some are to do with the actual construction of the tool: App and Augmented Reality designers and Search Engine Optimisers to build a flexible system of tagging. Before development gets too far, I’d like to include Type Historians and Archives to populate some sections for quality control and test the design with users at different points to create a strong project.

Lastly, I see the delivery stage as an ongoing process where testing, feedback and development continues as an iterative process.

Slide 8 – Features

I envision the tool as four different modules, called Catalogue, Archive, Explore and Augmented type. Let’s take a look.

Slide 9 – Catalogue 1

This is the core of the tool and aimed at all consumer segments. Here, users can upload their images into a shared catalogue that details the type features, usage and context and location. To help the user build a full description, I will include multi-choice tags and questions. The user can view posts in a feed or on a map to identify resources close to them.

Slide 10 – Catalogue 2

Users can build a profile and create collections for inspiration and gather references for projects. Users can set their privacy for these features.

Slide 11 – Archive

From the base of the Catalogue, the Archive module builds on the information to detail the further context. Users can message each other to share jobs, resources and knowledge that they can use to rebuild typefaces for the future. For example, fonts from ghost signs can be restored to create a background sign on a film set to add depth to the scene.  

Slide 12 – Explore

Typography reveals the history of an area and knowledge from the Archive module can build self-guided walking tours with information about chosen examples. There will be some built-in tours with the feature for users to craft their own.

Slide 13 – AR

Finally, Augmented Reality. It’s not enough to see what others have created – let’s create our own. Using typefaces designed in the Archive module, users can type their text to leave invisible messages for others or module a concept in Augmented Reality.

Slide 14 – Road Map

Going forward from this point, I have mapped out a rough route I can take to bring this tool to live. I begin with user research, consulting with experts before developing the tool. Then, the tool is tested and developed and improved up to launch, from when it will continue to this iterative process.

Slide 16 –

Thank you for paying such close attention to my pitch! I hope that you can see a place for this tool in your creative process. I can’t wait to see what you guys have come up with.

Slide 17 –

Do you have any questions?

Reflection 1 – Recalling my presentation

I like how this presentation went because I was much more prepared and together than in previous crits. I knew my stuff and was proud of my idea. That made a huge difference.

My slides were a little bit iffy thanks to Big Blue Button and optimisation and so the logo on the first page was missing. To me it was glaringly obvious and I pointed it out so that people would know it was the techs fault rather than my poor design. Sometimes I think that it helps to appear human rather than perfect in a presentation because everyone can relate to it.

The slide information and talking ratio was generally right, although on a couple I could have spoken rather than displaying the text too. This was deliberately set up for an in person pitch, and I wonder how best to translate the pitch to a format for a remote pitch instead.

I felt calm whilst doing it and measured out my pace when I thought I was going too fast. Writing out most of the script helped as I prepared the presentation so that I knew I was including everything I intended too. I might have come across as a little scripted and stilted but there were times I took the text more freely and ad libbed to include comments from Alex’s presentation before mine.

The trouble with bright pitch decks is that the app mockups came across as a little bland in comparison. The sage green didn’t give the impression wanted and I want to make it look cleaner,monochrome with one accent colour for the final presentation.

Week 8: Filo’type Copyright considerations

I need to think about how copyright will be addressed in this app, as it has legal and financial implications. First, I’m going to take a look at existing terms of use.

Pinterest

First impressions: It is very open and split into different categories. It also has the legalese followed by Plain English, so that people are able to understand what they are agreeing to.

Key quotes:

• If you post your content on Pinterest, it still belongs to you.
• If you post your content on Pinterest, we can show it to people and others can save it. Don’t post porn or spam or be rude to other people on Pinterest. 
• Pinterest has adopted and implemented the Pinterest Copyright Policy in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable copyright laws. For more information, please read our Copyright Policy. More simply put We respect copyrights. You should too.
• You will have to sue us here in Bay Area. In the EEA, this applies if you’re a merchant, but not if you’re a consumer. If you are a consumer in the EEA, you can sue us in your home courts.
• To submit a DMCA notice, just fill out our copyright complaint form.
• Pinterest respects the intellectual property rights of others and we expect people on Pinterest to do the same. It’s our policy—in appropriate circumstances and at our discretion—to disable or terminate the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing copyrights or other intellectual property rights.
• Our goal is to give you simple and meaningful choices regarding your information. If you have a Pinterest account, many of these controls are built directly into Pinterest or your settings.
• Children under 13 are not allowed to use Pinterest. If you are based in the EEA, you may only use Pinterest if you are over the age at which you can provide consent to data processing under the laws of your country.
• Pinterest isn’t a place for hateful content or the people and groups that promote hateful activities. We limit the distribution of or remove such content and accounts, including:
  • Slurs or negative stereotypes, caricatures and generalisations
  • Support for hate groups and people promoting hateful activities, prejudice and conspiracy theories
  • Condoning or trivialising violence because of a victim’s membership in a vulnerable or protected group
  • Support for white supremacy, limiting women’s rights and other discriminatory ideas (and it continues)
• We don’t allow content that reveals personal or sensitive information.

Instagram

Less immediately friendly than Instagram, but seems to be written in easy-to-understand language from the get-go.

Key quotes:

You must be at least 13 years old.

You can’t post private or confidential information or do anything that violates someone else’s rights, including intellectual property.

We do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant us a license to use it. Nothing is changing about your rights in your content. We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the Service.

Fonts in Use

Arghhhhh legalese! Still, it’s not too long and I think I can cope. There’s a lot that I would need to put into my terms and conditions to protect myself and my users

Key Quotes:

• Fonts In Use makes no claim to the trademarks or copyrights of third party’s works displayed on the Site.
• This license does not include any resale or commercial use of this Site or its contents; any collection and use of any product listings, descriptions, images, prices; any derivative use of this Site or its contents; any downloading or copying of account information for the benefit of another vendor; or any use of data mining, robots, spiders or similar data gathering and extraction tools.
• If you post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Fonts In Use a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sub-licensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Fonts In Use and sub-licensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they so choose. 

Week 7: Filo’Type

I am developing an exciting new app aimed at people obsessed with type, filo’type. Our world provides us with abundant typographic inspiration to capture and save for future reference, and we want to be able to store those images separately to our selfies and everyday photos. This is where filo’type is perfect. Upload snaps direct to the app, tag the location and away you go. Add information such as type of font, serif or san serif, colour, effects, and how it is used, that is saved with the photo and displayed on a map.

See what others have discovered, and pull together boards for reference for a new project, whether for a printed publication, website design or set design.

Take time to explore the local area by going on guided walks with a theme and stories of the context of each piece of type.

Week 7: Global Studio

The Challenge

Based on some of the debates and discussion covered so far, outline a series of ideas that could help you to work in new and more exciting collaborative ways.

1. What media and communication platforms could help support this? (This might be to help you collaborate with new design partners, introduce yourself to a new network or culture or area of investigation.)
2. Present your ideas as a one minute elevator pitch video (with the aim that you will develop one of those ideas further next week).

media and communication platforms

Looking at the different platforms (to come)

• Sticky notes
• Craig Oldham’s online portfolio for students
• https://www.trytriggers.com/approach

Ideas for Collaborative Tools

Filo-type

Rather than typing it all out again, please go to this post, where I explain the idea for a typographic sharing system.

Virtual Workshop

Zoom is magnificent! It has transformed the way we communicate in this tough time of Covid-19 lockdowns and can be used across software platforms. We’ve made it work how we can for we need it do to, and I think it can be levelled up. Say you’re in a workshop or meeting, and you want to divide into groups. With this programme you can do this. Here’s a metaphysical representation of what it would look like:

1. Meeting mode: your standard online session where everyone gathers in one room for a big chat with a meeting host. This can form the start or end of the meeting or workshop.
2. Group conversation mode: the group is split into smaller groups, either by predetermined lists or by the host clicking and dragging attendees together. There is a group leader who can steer the conversation, remaining in that smaller group, whilst the meeting host can tour around the groups as they please.
3. Workshop mode: Set-up beforehand, the meeting host can introduce tasks that can be rotated between the groups after a set period of time. The groups can write their thoughts on a virtual board for each task as a recording of the task.
4. At the end of the workshop or meeting, each group leader can present a brief overview of the tasks to the all attendees.

The session can be predetermined by the host and can move between any of these modes at the time or after a set period of time. A host can build the session exactly how they want before, adjust it throughout, or let it flow freely.

The session can be recorded and marked under each task/group for people to have a record of the work they have done.

Pass-a-line

This is nothing more than a diversion tool for teams! With friends, when we’re talking about hard subjects, sometimes we use a technique of additive drawing. We start with a blank sheet of paper, and as we talk, we take turns to add to the existing drawing in whatever way we like; the theory being that a shared activity can bring us together and provide a distraction when talking about really tough shit. To put a virtual and positive spin on this, it could form a creative way for people to come together to create something virtually – as long as it has nothing to do with the meeting – the more abstract the better! There would be some restrictions; it would be a line drawing app, no import of images or text.

Mode one: everyone gets a blank square on the website to doodle whatever they like on for the duration of the virtual meeting. At the end, a checkerboard would form to show all the squares, anonymously, of the meeting.

Mode two: everyone takes a turn for a certain amount of time and has to draw a line that starts where the last person finished at the edge of the page, and at the end of their turn, return the line to a different edge. The result would be continuous line through the meeting and challenge people to use one line only. At the end a wandering path would be displayed, and again it would be anon.

Networking Safari Supper

Getting to know people in the industry can feel like an expedition in the jungle. Will that frightening company head be a secret softie, and will that other newbie be a poisonous *****? At a traditional networking event, it can be anyone’s guess. Introducing the Networking Safari Supper, where if you’re involved you gotta be at least a bit friendly. Like its predecessor, the Safari Supper, the NSS groups people together for each course of the meal, splitting and growing for each course until they converge at the same venue for drinks. Smaller studios in Shoreditch would host sets of participants in their space, starting with nibbles, dividing the group and joining at bigger studios for some lush nosh, then at the megaliths to indulge those with sweet tooth and finally heading to a local bar for an almighty industry piss-up. No, sorry, a final debrief.

People starting out in the industry will have the chance to meet people like themselves and see a range of different studios where they can meet the people who work there. Ticket prices would have to be looked at to ensure a price that is accessible for everyone, but with the talent potential for the studios, it would be an opportunity for an industry-wide collaboration.

The safaris would be limited to an area of a city, for example, Shoreditch, and they would take place in studios rather than homes for safeguarding. It might take some walking or tubing to get between studios, but you would always be with someone from your previous course, plus a member of the previous studio to guide you on your way and show you the local area.

Elevator Pitch

Filo-type

I am going to take this idea forward, and present it as an elevator pitch. It was really fun to play around with AfterEffects to make this, and I learnt a lot. I did want to make it even more jazzy, but I decided to keep the animations simple so that I can reveal a UI later.

Go to this post to see the elevator pitch.

Filo-Type: Post-it map

I’ve been thinking of a tool for a couple of weeks now that would fit Brief 2: an app where you can take photos of typography you see out and about.

Why did I come up with this tool? My camera roll is constantly full of random photos of typography I have taken as reference or inspiration and they then proliferate all over the cloud in amongst selfies, cute pets etc. I want them somewhere separate, and ideally in a place I can tag them. If I know anything about people who like type, their camera folders are in a similar situation to mine, and this could be a tool where we share typographic inspiration.

So filo’type is born: a file of type, and it sounds like -phile, the Greek suffix to indicate someone who is very passionate about something. Typophile is taken by another typographic endeavour, so I have switched the words around. Filo’type does of course sound like philotype, which is a theoretical way of categorising yourself by philosophical school. It doesn’t seem widespread and in a different discipline, so I feel I can stand by the name.

Here’s my post-note wall of features:

This is the beginning of the process, so it’s a rough start…

Week 6: Critical Research Journal

Weekly Learning Objectives

By the end of this week you should be able to:

• Research and analyse how interdisciplinary collaboration can form exciting partnerships in graphic design;
• Research and analyse new genres of design specialism;
• Identify a discipline and specialist who could help you to reflect from a dynamically opposing position on a specific problem;
• Find, manage and record your cross-disciplinary discussion in relation to the specific problem;

interdisciplinary collaboration

Coelicolor by Faber Futures

On this course I keep referring to Faber Futures, first as a local practice in Contemporary Futures and then a couple of weeks ago when we looked at mission statements. Why do I keep on coming back to it? It’s an amazing project that uses genetic and biological solutions to dye fabrics in a sustainable way.

For the project, Coelicolor, featured above, Faber Futures worked in collaboration with Professor John Ward and his synthetic biology lab at University College London’s Department of Biochemical Engineering, They discovered that unique interactions between S. coelicolor and protein fibres could yield a colourfast finish without the use of chemicals – and with significantly reduced water usage compared to current industrial dyeing methods.

Color Coded by Faber Futures

From there, Faber Futures went on to create the first DNA labelled specimen in the Forbes Pigment Collection. Working in collaboration with Michael Napolitano, a design engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks, Faber Futures “has explored emerging DNA-based data storage techniques to encode a contextual explanation of the project, the organism’s complete genome, and information about its potential applications, including textile dyeing.”

Imagination and skills

Design, I think, is all about imagination about new ways to show the world around us, real or speculative.

I would argue that all jobs are creative in their own way: creative with words, with numbers, with colours, with strategy; and all roles require that people think in novel combinations of these creativities. We can do things as we did before, but without that spark between flints in a cave, that spark of understanding of our place in the sky, we would not have progressed as a species. Everyone is creative and uses their imagination to different purposes and extents.

Sometimes, imagination isn’t enough to realise an idea. A sketch is the start and designers won’t have all the skills to being their idea to life. They reach out to other people with different skills to help them, whether on a small scale like printers to display their work, a traditional illustrator/designer pairing, or a more radical collaboration called Interdisciplinary collaborations.

Human knowledge is one huge ocean that gradually we have put up (shifting) boundaries between disciplines. It can be enough to swim around with the rest of the water in the same pond, but to make truly startling innovations, we need to jump into other ponds. Is that enough analogy?

Faber Futures could not have progressed with their projects without the collaboration of scientists who were able to contribute their expertise and knowledge to further the projects. Would the scientists have thought of these possibilities on their own? Maybe, maybe not. Would Faber Futures have been able to do this without them? Maybe, if they had retrained as in that field to great expense and time cost. The collaboration brought their skills together that would not have been as possible otherwise.

This weeks resources …

… I found it harder to engage with than other weeks but here are my thoughts.

The lecture started with a recap of Bauhaus, a school of design that allowed students to pass between and over the disciplines as they studied to create an overall experience rather than a specialism. I’m sure some people leaned to one interest or another, and being educated together in the same schools would have fostered collaborations.

Bauhaus curriculum

With Dr Ian Medway and Katie Mae Boyd, Louize Harries created a project that borrowed inspiration from apocryphal crises with a drone that rained red when the air pollution in the area breached the EU air quality limits. This was a proof of concept project, rather than a fully realised project, and has a similar aim to Anub Jain’s air-quality presentation for the UAE energy board.

The Red Rains of Change

Drones are becoming a popular way for designers to explore large 3D areas and can provide many functions. Still, drones are not ubiquitous and to navigate the legal frameworks and immense physical space with humans and other 3D objects would require a whole other set of people well versed in these subjects. For the drone-vigilante project “The Night Watchmen” by Anub Jain that tracked and monitored people around an area, it was the consideration of what kind of society would allow a piece of equipment to be used in this way? The suggestion that this is what the combination of drone and facial recognition technology could do is enough for us to decide whether we want to transform into a society that sanctions this. For Harries’ drone project, to create a fleet of drones that would rain red would be extremely difficult and unpopular with the people it rained upon. The concept was evidence to show the world we are living in now and to draw attention to the issue, a call to action to change.

Referring to a different project of Jain’s, she has stated that because the world seems to be moving too fast and we are experiencing a disconnect with our future. For the air-quality presentation to the UAE energy board, she wanted to bring the reality of poor quality air into a concrete example.. Most of us know that using more cars and unsustainable energy sources will result in poor air quality, but how many of us truly understand this? Jain created flasks of air simulated to match potential airs in the future. By breathing in the noxious air, a bridge was built between the disconnect of the future and now.

Change in air quality, after and before lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic

Side note: since the pandemic of Covid-19, lockdowns across the world have drastically reduced traffic in cities and meant that people can experience the effect that poor vs good air quality can have. Mountains can be seen from cities that hadn’t seen the ranges for generations, the air felt cleaner to breathe. I hope that it serves as a starting point from which we can start discussions and change our actions.

To be honest, I didn’t connect with the rest of the projects and videos,. I tried! There must be many more examples of projects and maybe they will come through in my workshop challenge. What did strike me, though, is the necessity of collaborations between designers and any other discipline to spark an idea of a new future, to challenge the knowledge and the skills to bring it to life.

Resources