ITAP #4

Draw. Work by hand

A reflective visual journal is in essence a safe place to nurture and develop ideas. It’s a tool to enable the user to engage with the creative process as a learning journey. Perfection doesn’t matter in an RVJ, it’s about thinking visually, thinking by drawing, thinking out loud. Take designer Stefan Sagmeister for example, just from this one page you can tell that he’s exploring ideas, using images to speculate over design. Aside from traditional image making, I like Ken Carbone’s journal because it’s visually answering questions he’s asking, but also showing that RVJ’s really don’t have to be purely hand-drawn in. They’re a visual tool, so any form of image making can be included as a way to help you progress mentally and practically with your ideas.

Cultivate reflective practice

A reflective visual journal is a place to think. The user can use it to engage, question, evaluate, challenge, compare, contrast…etc. Brief notes should be made to record their critical reflection at all stages of the process. Although text can be visual as well, the critical reflection shouldn’t be an essay. Accompanying text to a paragraph at the most, as more can take away from the ideas and images that you are writing about. Visual and textual languages have specific advantages and disadvantages, but they work together extremely well. Visual language represents the visual world, so is good at grabbing attention and provoking an emotional response, whereas textual language is good at providing specifics and detail. Though saying this, you can create a visual language from textual language as well. Nobody has the time to read through enormous amounts of text, so if it has to be in there make the key points known, make them obvious. Our brains aren’t very good at distinguishing how to feel about seeing a picture of something real and actually seeing the real thing as the emotions illicited are similar for both. Words can actually help us distinguish better. When reflecting on work it’s important to ask yourself questions, such as ‘what if?’, ‘what is useful?’ and ‘why?’. This can help you work out problems and allow you to move forward with certain ideas, as well as making the ideas stronger.

ITAP #3

Researching the content

Within the world of visual communication researching the content for new briefs is a very important part as without it, the produced outcome will be of a poor standard compared to its contemporaries and it will not have any relevance. The whole point of research is to understand your ideas more thoroughly and then be able to take the best one(s) further. Only by doing this can you reach a well thought out final outcome that showcases your skill and meets most of, if not all the criteria of the brief.

The first thing you need to look into when researching the content is the subject of the brief. You need to know what it is and what’s it’s for, and then you can start researching it more thoroughly. Next would come the audience. If the brief was to design a poster for a children’s film, you wouldn’t create a poster featuring adult content that was obviously specifically aimed at adults as that goes against the brief and is for the wrong audience. You need to think about the people who will be seeing the film, which in this case would be young children. Research aspects of design that are known to appeal to that specific demographic. Without researching the audience properly, the entire outcome can fail as it wouldn’t be relevant and wouldn’t hold any appeal.

Finally, the message. This is the most important stage as it’s the main point of the brief. It needs to be easily communicated. In this case as it would be for a children’s film it would need to be quite simple, but also eye catching, playful and amusing. This is the area that should draw the intended audience in.

Researching the practice

When researching any practice you need to start by asking questions. With regards to visual communication one of the first questions you might ask could be ‘How do visual communicators think?’ and this can start the whole research process by exploring how they think and get those thoughts onto paper, by looking into the different ways people do this and their respective styles. More questions can arise from this such as ‘Who’s style do I admire? Who inspires me?’ and this can lead into exploring artists’ backgrounds and how they work, finding out how decide what style/colour/typeface/media to use in different projects. This all helps to understand the differing ways visual communicators work and how broad the possibilities of the practice are, showing you what has already been designed, and how. Observation, experimentation, reading, listening, exploring, all are key to researching and learning.

ITAP #2

Through the ‘visual practice’ of observation, collecting, studying and exploring, illustration can contribute to a deeper understanding of the subject.

Observation is an important part of the research process. Whether it’s everyday observation, or observing another practitioners work, it is a key process to enable you to progress with a project. Observational drawing provides insight into a specific subject, time or place, and it doesn’t just have to be drawing, but any form of image making. It is a form of primary research, and therefore allows you to get a firsthand look into your chosen subject. This can be said for collecting items too. An object can mean many different things for different people, and by documenting these results you can get a better understanding of the subject you’re researching. Studying and exploring are a mixture of primary and secondary research. You can study your subject further by referencing books or websites, but also by experimenting with different media and doing visual studies. This is continued by exploring different mediums and techniques. All of these visual practices enable you to get a deeper understanding of the subject you’re researching because you’re constantly investigating and exploring each area in detail, and therefore learning more about that specific subject as you go along.

An understanding and knowledge of ‘an audience’ can enhance and focus the communication

When communicating any message the intended audience has to be pre-determined and researched otherwise the communication will not have any focus. An understanding and knowledge of this audience is essential, otherwise the message will fail to come across. This is especially relevant in advertising, for example, if you’re trying to advertise a car to a 20 to 40 year old male demographic, you wouldn’t create an advertisement that appeals more to 6 year old girls because then the advert would have failed to communicate its message properly. If you’re trying to convey a message then you must first work out who you want to convey it to, and then research that particular audience to find out the best way to get that message across. Understanding the audience can radically change the outcome of a piece of work as it starts to have more of a purpose. By understanding how that particular audience thinks, acts, and lives you can communicate more successfully than if you hadn’t thought about the audience at all. People prefer to be able to relate to things, if they can’t relate to it then chances are they’ll ignore it. I do believe that the communication of a piece of work can be enhanced and focused by relating to a target audience.

Integrating Theory And Practice #1 (ITAP)

Can Recontextualised Ideas Be Contemporary and Notions of Originality

Originality is something every artist wants to be credited with, but in reality very few works can truly be called original. We take inspiration from everything around us, and because of this there will always be parts of a piece that have been done before, whether it is a certain technique, drawing style, or even just subject material. Quite a lot of the time you may not even realise how close your work is to someone else’s until you compare them. Saying that, there has been a definite influx recently of intentionally copied work and mainly, I find, in advertising. It seems to be that in order to sell something now, some companies, instead of trying to create something new and exciting, will just look for an idea that was popular, and copy it. One that was particularly obvious was the 2008 advert for Berocca featuring people dancing on treadmills. The slogun was ‘You, but on a really good day’, so to me it seemed the point of the advert was to say that you can be happy and energetic if you take Berocca. The communication of the advert works, it’s understandable, it’s just the subject material. In 2006 a band called Ok Go created a viral frenzy when they released a video for their song ‘Here It Goes Again’. It featured the band singing and dancing, on treadmills. It was such an original idea that it went on to win a Grammy award in 2007. People could argue that Berocca just took an interesting idea and put a different spin on it, but the fact that they even used some of the main dance moves from the Ok Go video shows that essentially they just copied it.

Originality is rarely found in this modern age, but I think the overall meaning of the word is starting to change. It’s no longer just about completely new ideas that no-one has done before, but also creating new concepts that are a fresh take on old ideas. It’s tied into recontextualising ideas to form new bodies of work. So to answer the question ‘Can recontextualised ideas be contemporary?’ I think yes, they can. By taking something old and putting a modern spin on it, would you not call the finished product contemporary? Take katagami for example, the ancient Japanese art of making paper stencils. This skill definitely wouldn’t be called contemporary, but artist Jennifer Falck Linssen uses it to create sculptures which you cannot help but call contemporary art. Katagami stencils would have been used for kimono printing, but Linssen turns them into something new. Her pieces all seem to have a calm serenity about them, which ties in with their historical origins, but they have a different purpose and isn’t that what recontextualising is all about?

Contemporary art is full of recontextualised ideas, but that doesn’t mean they’re not original. I think that by adding something new you can make an idea yours and use it to create an original piece.