Application and Interactions
My Reflection
This lecture was fantastic in looking at other practitioner’s processes in their development and how they had challenges to cope with either success or failure. Throughout it constantly advised to always reflect on your process and be open to change direction if you get to a point where your concept has hit a snag. Sam Bompas describes the more connections you make, the more likely you are to end up with a good creative idea, and truly right this is when gathering your research at the beginning to help develop your progress. You have to allow yourself to make mistakes at times so you can really move the projects further, even it means to take new directions that can truly help make a good design decision in the making. Also, I shouldn’t be too sentimental in my approach as I should be free to sketch rough ideas that can eliminate those that don’t work in my process at an early stage. This is down to having an hour or two to identify ideas that are successful or not followed with further research. Documenting is key I can see from what James Stringer from Werkflow talks about in the lecture. He talks about how he usually documents the project to analyse the process which I totally understand why, so he can learn from the good and bad points. This is what I need to do and realise to make as a habit with whatever tool I can use to identify this process in my projects. The fact we have access to a great piece of technology like our phones to help document our development into our practice.
Always remember to approach a self-initiated project for 2 reasons. Firstly create something that your passionate about to make it happen with the right reason that others can appreciate and understand your thinking. Secondly, be prepared this is a journey of learning in this project and you’ll come to points you’ll fail and succeed but overall you will gain a better knowledge of your practice and craft. It’s completely investing your time and learning that will benefit you when working on commercial projects as you can add new skills and resources to your client’s needs in your practice. It’s clearly a process of self-expressing your creativity and fulfilling your desire to have confidence in your ability whether you succeed or not. I enjoyed the quote by Samual Beckett, which Christopher Miller (Offshore) pointed out which goes as:
Ever Tried, Ever Failed, No Matter.
Try again, Fail Again, Fail Better
By this we should acknowledge human imperfection and accept that failure is part of the learning process, but failing better means trying and trying again, but with a difference.
Erik Kessels on the Power of Failure
This talk by Erik Kessels was great and thoroughly enjoyed him presenting his projects in an open approach in his work and the nature of who he is. I recently brought his book ‘Failed It’ which is a great read on flipping the word ‘failure’ on its head and seeing the positive in our mistakes. I love the work on ‘Hans Brinker Budget Hotel‘ as it had pure comedy value through honesty that made it become a bit of a successful story. The story of the hotel brings a genius approach of making the worst of things the hotel can offer, has been enlightened by their own reflection of things that can’t get any worse than it is through the sense of humour. It shows ideas came together one after the other through seeing the little things in the project.
So Erik spoke about ‘Embrace Impossible Ideas’ that you think would never happen or are totally impossible to work on. He talks about the ‘Hans Brinker Budget Hotel‘ project which looks at the work, he had so much fun with this through using humour on the selling point of how bad the hotel experience.
It was so honest that it made it become a bit of a success story in its brand using eye-catching phases. It spoke about the worst things in the hotel but spinning on its head towards its audience to show the humour for people to feel at ease as to what they’re getting for their money. This showed endless possibilities for Erik to jump on the idea of using a witty approach throughout the project whenever the opportunity had arisen. This clearly was a project that rarely has the chance to run away with it, for a client to accept the position where the brand is, it can’t get any worst.
Further Research
Shit
by Erik Kessels
This curated exhibition really caught my eye as my self-initiated project links with the same toilet humour as Erik Kessels fine work. This project showed an archive of images dated back in the Second World War of German soldiers doing their business in battle during this period of time. This was a pictorial showpiece of a photographer’s work that was discovered by Erik who exhibited the photos in a small white cube with a smell inside. This completely exposes a particularly shitty aspect of the war that no other would not like to see.
This became a publication as well an exhibit and this humours side of it is somewhat how I want my self-initiated piece to project to its the audience. I like the use of typography as the gothic style relates to the time of history that this play upon. This brings the relationship of history to the context of the show and publication that was achieved.
Workshop Challenge
This week I’ve progressed with my concept of creating a series of prints that can be exhibited or publication for the audience to see. I’m still quite open to my direction as I haven’t got a clear mind on how this should entirely looks as I feel I’m relying on my development to help me progress my direction. This is something I really need to establish at an earlier stage with a clearer idea on one direction that can lead to possibly others within it.
I completely started to change my direction to printing these messages on something more tactile such as toilet rolls with messages throughout the roll ending with a positive message that can impact the audience. As you can see these are some ideas written down with this direction and happy to explore further.
This iconic artwork from NWA, Straight Outta Compton was the first piece of inspiration that brought the idea of using song titles or lyrics in suggestion to toilet humour. Here allowed me to explore creativity in writing which something I’m not strongly confidence in with my dyslexia but felt I need to give it a go.
These are some examples of the titles and lyrics I’ve used to start my piece into Lino printing this messages as I had already needed to change the direction of the craft I wanted to portray this design.
This is my attempt in creating my Lino printing which, I documented via video to show how I created my first initial prototype of the prints. This was a very tricky way of creating shapes with the tools, especially the fine details of the typeface, which was completed very difficult to keep a smooth transition in keeping the shape.
These are my first attempt trialing the print to see the outcome of how the print will look. They look a lot better than I imagined as the style of font is not exactly how I wanted it first but looking at them they have this unique style of its own typeface. It does remind the style of handmade protest boards that people make for marches and maybe this look and feel helps its course?
Ideas Wall
Weekly Reflection
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