{ CONTEXTUAL TIME-LINE }
CAN ART BE TAUGHT? While I don’t count design as an art, more of a solution to a problem I feel it falls under the same kind of thinking. Can design be taught? Now we could discuss the idea behind the way the subline is being toned down in the industry and we are aspiring towards small creative visions, but I feel it’s the way design is taught is a great perspective to look at this issue from. Now from personally experience there is a way I much prefer versus a way I in many ways cannot stand. As a creative I much preferred the way I was taught in college. We were briefed and left to our own devices in relation to how we tackled the task. This in many ways is how studio works at university and is the environment I am most comfortable in, it allows us to ask for help when we want to learn something new or get on ourselves if we feel otherwise. However there’s the other side to design education in which we sit in a studio and learn a process step by step. And while this does help us to learn some technical abilities it is an incredibly slow and stressful process. Although it has in fact enhanced my design work on a technical level and thus would begin to start suggesting that yes in many ways design can in fact be taught. Although it’s the mind-set, the creative ambition, the drive to be original that I feel Elkins is suggesting cannot be taught. It’s this that allows writers to change careers, journalists to rethink their process and make creatives out of people who haven’t directly been taught to be creative.
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Creative_Arts_Building,_University_of_Huddersfield_-_geograph. org.uk_-_834099.jpg
THE DOT AND CIRCLE CHALLENGE This was another seminar we got directly involved in and made a great point about design and designers in themselves. We were set a set of rules to follow which in turn would create a piece of hand drawn work, filling a beach with dots or a trying to create the perfect circle. While seeming simple these little sessions made a few very good points about design and designers in general. While we were keeping to the same rules we all approached creating this perfect circle in a different way, the different colours show the different peoples contributions. Now some people drew big circles, some people drew little adjustments and this all combined to our very best attempt to make the perfect circle! Something we can get close to but will never actually possible, no circle in history has ever been the same on a microscopic level. This is a great parallel to understanding how a great design team works, we all had our different methods, different understandings of how to accomplish the task but it was only when we put our minds together the circle became perfect. Now the dotted beach experiment was another great example of a way to judge work. We could have continued adding dots, making it more crowded, but once we pass the threshold the page would no longer be dots but a filled page and will have completely lost its meaning. If we apply this to design it proves there is a limit, a design has a peak in which it is at its very best and it can take a long time to get there, but once you are it can be very easy to carry on too far and cause it to lose meaning. So despite this seminar seeming basic at first glance, it was only now when I reflect back on it when I begin to understand its deeper meaning.
FIRST THINGS FIRST MANIFESTO The design manifesto. Design is an ever changing economy however over the past fifty years has stalled in its development. Design has become corporate, marketing, a way of boasting your company. However, design has so much more potential to be so much more and that is what the first things first manifesto is trying to portray. Now with the manifesto we simply took black markers and redacted the text to portray a new meaning, a new understanding. My manifesto read: Visual communicators have been raised in a world of advertising, presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. The markets reward it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it. Commercial work has always paid designers who devote their efforts primarily to development of unprecedented marketing campaigns. I propose and exploration and production of a new kind of consumerism through design. What I meant by this is that it has long being known doing a logo, or a restaurant menu will make you money. However the manifesto suggests we should start avoiding this kind of design in search of more ambitious conceptual work! However, I propose a middle ground in which we as designers and problem solvers can create a new standard of consumerism which would evoke the creation of fresh new ideas in the world of branding, marketing and consumerism. It’s great design that makes these subjects interesting. And as someone who does love the idea of designing for cinema, designing as an art. Turning consumerism into an art form for me is equally as inviting.
GODZILLA PEACE POSTER This lecture was a great addition to my contextual portfolio as it directly relates to what was covered in the first is first manifesto. The manifesto mentions this idea of stepping away from ‘safe’ commercial design, and revitalising design with brand new creativity. And while I argued creativity can still very much be explored within consumerism, the work we visited today is a prime example of design breaking down cultural barriers and visually representing it. Why this poster really stuck with me though was all the hidden meanings within. While many Godzilla/Kong fans may find it comical and fun, it’s only when you start to dissect it piece by piece when you see the real meaning behind its inception. And while it becomes an obvious representation of peace between Japan and American in regards to Pearl Harbor and the following atomic bombs, there is an even deeper meaning behind the creation of Godzilla herself. Godzilla, a creation of radiation is direct metaphor to the World War 2 atomic bombs. Destroying everything in his wake and being an embodiment of complete destruction. Now this whole package is a great example of how real world events influence the creative process and is something I am going to take directly into my own project. In the past I’ve worked on poster design before but simply looked at it from a technical and creative stand point.
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However now with this in mind I feel adding in political issues can really enhance a design and will rope in incredibly well with the conversation brief, creating a political conversation. My current idea was to create three posters depicting three different visions of the future in one hundred years. These visions have been theorised by strangers on online communities and my own peers after sending out a questionnaire. I was then going to simply create the posters as something for me to look back and comment on as the future finally comes around to being. However with this new perspective I can involve it with real world situations. The posters were going to cover, the ever growing taller skyscrapers and smog in cities, an eco-positive future, and a complete wasteland. However today we can already see these three points evolving, Chinas ever growing population will cause them to build upwards instead of outwards. Sweden has been going ever greener for years and collectively as the worlds super powers we are destroying more and more of the middle east every year. With these three capital points in mind I can develop the posters with the same creative thinking, but with a deeper political meanings, a parallel to the way Godzilla herself was created.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=godzilla+king+kong+poster&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=979&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMI273DgLX1yAIVxNkaCh36Pwdk#tbm=isch&q=godzilla+king+kong+peace+poster&imgrc=r9l7MjK11Koz9M%3A