VIS5037 Blog: Week Four (W/C 14/10/19)
9 hour days. Double brief modules. Peer Reviews. Active Reading. It’s safe to say we’re in the thick of it
So Monday was a 9 hour day… and it began with a module recap, just highlighting where we should be in terms of both research and creative exploration. I feel at this part of the project a lot of my secondary research has been done, I have found my own sources as well as read the suggested reading, with primary research planned to do in the near feature. In terms of my creative process, I may be falling behind, with a lot of the content written it now just down to me curating this all and creating a full pagination plan; especially as I would like to make a digital reader to go with the physical mag. But there was also a stark reminder that we have no longer than 3 weeks to work on the editorial in self-directed study time, in order to upload the PDF in time for the 11th November deadline.
Then the module leader; Jane Anderson, went on to pre-launch the second brief of this module explaining that these were live briefs with real clients, real deadlines and real budgets there is a definite sense of urgency. Upon listening to each tutor breakdown the different live brief options I felt myself leaning towards the third brief. Fika Tea; a Swedish tea brand looking to start selling herbal tea in the UK with a strong narrative of wellness and serenity. This would be a brand identity and packaging project, with the potential of working with them further creating a social media kit and possible front end web design. My intention is to get some research done before the brief launch on the 21st of October. After a quick break, we went into a student forum session this gave the students an opportunity to anonymously give their positive and negative thoughts on the course. As a student representative, I had the opportunity of leading my third of the year group in these discussions and feeding it back to the lecturers. This way of active learning is really encouraging as it allows us the students to feel valued as well as directing our studies to what works for us individually. This also gave the opportunity for people who hadn’t previously talked an opportunity to and get to know one another — bonding over their likes and dislikes of the course. This led quite nicely into the peer review that I mentioned earlier — working through a review sheet we directed our critique and celebration against basic and advanced elements of design. All this aiding our growth as creative professionals. We then went back and reviewed our work I used this time to start planning out what would like to get done and when I would like it done by.
Contextual studies: in the afternoon we then had a contextual studies lecture with the subject matter of gender inequality as the area of study.
Gender and why it is important to talk about gender.
Gender imbalance is still a national and international problem, this becomes glaringly obvious in the workplace especially high power roles. Although we may be more advanced in this concept here in the west, in places like Saudi Arabia they still operate with a male guardian system; in which you must have a brother, husband and/or spouse to dictate decision making. Until 2018 women were not permitted in sports stadiums, even as spectators. Ally went on to discuss where sex is genetic and predetermined, gender and binary gender theories are social constructs and they are currently being deconstructed, this can be seen in Facebooks 71 new gender options to now choose from. ‘In the 1800s, Karl Marx wrote about the ways in which humans are shaped by capitalist society, he argued that the work environment would shape who you are as a person and referred to this concept as the ‘collective self. We also learnt an opposing idea of the subjective self he called the self the subject and believed the subject is in a constant conflict of following its desires (and drives) and cultural demands in society against your own personal desires. There were also some really interesting thoughts about how gender and linguistics are closely linked: in many languages — such as German or French nouns are directly gendered, even in the English language we have gender directed nouns. The problems lie with the connotations rather than vocabulary, some examples of feminine nouns used in the English language could be; mistress, madam or spinster — but the male equivalent would tend to be either more colloquial or be perceived much more positively. This is most notable in terms that involve sexual partners, or more specifically an individual of either gender involved in multiple sexual relations. Something that feels will really influence my practice is the idea/practice of Norm-creatively, especially as it overlaps with my essay title. Norm-creativity is a design approach; begins with a critique of who or what is being represented, and its potential effects identifying any bias’ in-house before any members of your audience is excluded.
And to finish Monday, from 5–7 pm we sat back took a break and went to the inaugural print club meeting. We all came with vague ideas of what we wanted to get out of the session or ideas of what we thought we’d be creating at this evening session. Then we got there. There was noise, prints, paper, glue, scissors, you name it, it was there but in this organised mess there was a real slowness to the session, Rebecca Howson, the tutor running this session had really encouraged the idea of playing, we began flicking through old paper samples, newspapers and magazine prints cutting and pasting details we like creating weird and wonderful pages of inspiration. To then riso print and share with the rest of the group, and in the process of making it, everyone is communicating sharing ideas, giving yourself space to process this mornings information and just having a really good time, a fitting way to finish.
Going away from this I had a slower rest of the week focussing mainly on a couple of freelance briefs that managed to secure during my studies — keeping a roof over my head — but also a welcome break from the structured university cycle. Wednesdays in-class session began with research and writing workshop, a quick refresher on; the Learning Objective fulfilled by your writing, finding appropriate sources, paragraph construction and everyone’s favourite Harvard referencing. This was again another really informative session, we were also given a list of quality industry publications and sources, and reminded of the academic material found using summon and in the library. Most importantly for me was to really consider my paragraph structure, upon listening to this, I sat for a one-on-one with Ally and we went through my first draft of the essay, though there were many positives she pointed out punctuation and paragraph construction as areas to focus on now. I took notice of what Ally said and am looking to revisit certain parts of the essay, also with the limit of the word count, removing parts completely to help me drive further into specific ideas. I was actually inspired by a book by the name ‘Print is dead. Long live print’ in which an independent magazine interviewed a different person for each issue, and that was it, the interview in the magazine. With a lack of primary research, I reached out to Luke Tonge, the current brand director of Birmingham Design, to answer some case-specific questions about my project — through the rest of the week I would conduct interviews with him and other working professionals in the local area, who would, in turn, give me their views on inclusivity in the workplace.
Following the essay writing workshop on Wednesday afternoon we had our first “Lunch & Learn’ session where we joined together as a group and watch Ruth E Carters episode of Abstract. Having already watched this focussed more on eating and getting some other uni work done, though I couldn’t help but lost in her story every so often, I find it beyond inspiring. After this I hung around for the extracurricular photoshop session, this technical workshop covered how to use the histogram properly and a recap on masking. Tony; the senior adobe technician, went on to show us how to use adjustment layers such as curves and the countless options with opacity layers, he also demoed how to retouch photos using these tools. Technical workshops like this are just as useful as the contextual and theory-based studies, both must work hand in hand, to create a successful image. As the week drew to a close I continued my research into the subject of editorial design — with a full bank or references and a strong idea of the design language I would like throughout the magazine. In addition to this, my research into Fika Tea was well underway… and I think that’s it, thanks and God bless.
