JOURNAL NO.2
SELF REFLECTIVE JOURNAL IS A COLLECTIVE OF THOUGHT PROCESS, RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION.
- SELF-REFLECTIVE JOURNAL ENTRY : OCTOBER 2018 PROJECT : AN IMAGE ABOUT ANXIETY / BRIEF B
IDEATION RESEARCH Our meditation process about this project is mainly about censorship. I was very fascinated by the mysteriousness of the black square like there is some kind of surprises in the back or some kind of revelation, therefore, it intrigues me. Furthermore, I agree with the feedback of the presentation that may be a personal take on the meditation would be better because I feel like the last presentation and the approach is very ‘political’ for me, therefore, I am not too comfortable to take it on further personally. In my personal reflection as well, maybe the team dynamic; even though we all get along, I think that maybe we were not very much in the same ‘mind’ in terms of executing an idea for final idea, therefore the project’s presentation seems more just about an ‘information’ rather than a final executed idea. I also would like to add that maybe the team dynamic is not what performing quite well, therefore, we were not able to achieve better work. Moreover, that is why I am focusing on reflecting this project which we developed the idea from ‘censorship’ and as from previous feedback I take it in that, of course, I’d like to see what is my personal take on the project and I would like to focus on ‘self-censoring’ and because from what we have established is that censoring comes from within people and what they choose to censor.
VISUAL RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTATION
I thought that ‘self-censoring’ is somehow connected to anxiety and how denial manifests into insecurity and low self-esteem. Since this is a personal project, I thought of involving self portrait will be an interesting take on it. In my thought process as well, I thought that black square represents anxiety where you usually just feel that emptiness inside and the ‘not-good-enough’ feeling. This was one of the last project I had the time to experiment with because I found my self a bit anxious talking about my anxiety, so I thought of maybe creating graphic work based on the ‘inspirational quotes’ with colourful colours and fun graphics making the project more hopeful and have something to look up to. Left the project a couple of days, and look at it again with fresh eyes- and it just doesn’t feel ‘personal’ to me, it looks more like a ‘pinterest’ image. Therefore, I thought of pushing it a bit more further and look into self images. I get to use these images (on the left) for another self-initiated project.
by Natalie Catalina Francesca Woodman
by Design All Kinds
VISUAL RESEARCH Since, I was looking into more of a personal touch into the project... I look into francesca woodman- the way she works with self portrait and obsecurity. But what I wanted to do is to mix the self-portrait with a body of text, I wanted to explore how self portrait mix with a body of text. I wanted to explore the way that this could an ‘image’ and graphic design body of work. And this is where the hardest part comes in... I had a great idea to scanned one of the letters I wrote to my self and just have that as a centre of my work. P.S. Whenever I feel down, I wrote a letter or a type of journal entry. It helps me sometimes.
EXPERIMENTATION First of all, a whole bunch of letters I wrote - I kept a pile of them. I never want to open and read them at all, something about feeling afraid of opening it and facing the truth (self-censoring). Therefore, scanning these letters- forces me to read it through. I also chose this one because it wasn’t sealed, in a way I chose the easier one to read. At first, I thought having the letter will be enoughbut I think that maybe pushing it further in a way that it doesn’t look lazy will be quite interesting. So I chose the last time I felt really loved, content and happiest- and that was three years ago on my 22nd birthday. Also, documented very well.
FINAL IMAGES
Chosing black and white for me conveys the ‘personal’ image for me. And chosing the ones where I smile is another decision I made because most likely mental illness is hidden under ‘I am fine’ or laughs.
Choosing to put the letter just underneath my smile is so that the viewer can still see the smile hence happiness, but I put the letter just in front of it to kind of disturb the smile and convey the truth.
REFLECTION First of all, I hope that you are reading this with an open mind and think that anxiety affects anyone and everyone. And that I didn’t know I have anxiety until 3 years ago when my friends told me that my worry are not normal, because it happens pretty much all the time. A little reflection on this project is that I never thought I would ever make a project about my anxiety, but when I read up about ‘self-censoring’ it sounds like my anxietythe way my brain thinks. I was really afraid to show it to everyone too, but I thought that this year I am able to talk about it in public, I can challenge my self to make a project about it. What I am proving in here is that I am working through it, recognising it and trying to live with it. And refering back to the first page of the first book, I wanted to explore personal project in this MA- push my self to put a little bit of my self into projects.
- SELF-REFLECTIVE JOURNAL ENTRY : DECEMBER 2018 PROJECT : HELLO I AM GLIA / BRIEF C
IDEATION RESEARCH The Library of Babel invites us to see infinity and wonders of another realm or world. We started on a brainstorm that leads us to Library is a storage of knowledge and that it has a similarity to our brain. In the story, the character The Inquisitor was introduced where she/he takes care and maintain the order of the library - and we (Ruby and I) were fascinated into ‘what’ or ‘who’ is The Inquisitor to our brain. And honestly, this idea comes from our normal conversation on ‘have you read this book on the importance of sleep?’ and after receiving the brief- our thoughts just works conceptually in a way to compare the library of babel with our brain and the importance of taking care of the brain by sleeping.
CONTEXT RESEARCH We looked into Glia and its job- and found out that Glia / The Inquisitor of the brain can only work when we’re asleep- hence why we want to focus our campaign to the importance of sleep. Glia is a non-neuronal cells in human’s central nervous system which provides supports and protections for Neurones, however, Glia cells can only work when we are asleep. Glia is a campaign to support the importance of sleep. Our campaign narrative is heavily based on Glia as the character, making it alive, have personality but yet abstract.
by Vasjen Katro
by Stephanie Arvelo
by Jenny Pennywood
by Romain Gorisse
VISUAL RESEARCH
First of all, we bond over our very much fascination with Baugasm; a poster series made by Vasjen Katro and the interesting is that they are motion poster, which is what our idea is based on. We also thought that we’d use the ‘calming’ colour as a gradient in the background but in the end we ditch them because we thought it is too much and perhaps too ‘cliche’ because of the ‘sleeping’ ‘dreamy’ connotation.
VISUAL RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTATION
Ruby learnt how to use Cinema 4D and created the character Glia, and the phrase that Ruby used “Hello I am Glia” kind of stuck with me, therefore that was pretty much the very first copy we ever thought of for the first poster. After several conversation, we always thought of making Glia as friendly as possible; and that the protagonist of our story is Glia. With the environment where Glia is in, we had several experimentation of putting Glia in different ‘gradient’ environment - exhibit in the next page - bear in mind that we were very inspired by Vasjen Katro. But we thought that the environment is already too crowded that Glia will perhaps lose its flare, whereas we want the attention to be all in Glia.
EXPERIMENTATION
VISUAL RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTATION
By happy accident, we noticed that by just having black and white background for the campaign- looks rich and elegant for Glia it self, therefore we decided on that background. We experimented by putting a lot of Glia in one poster, but it appears to be too crowded that we can’t read the text. I was in charge of the animation because I have learnt how to use After Effects previously, therefore we combined our expertise to create the motion posters. We also thought that Glia is moving perfectly, however, it is not that ‘organic’ and ‘fluid’.
FINAL IMAGES The final 5 poster consists of story line of how Glia works- We try to make it conceptual or abstract because we don’t want to make ‘just another sleep’ advertisement. We want the advert to be engaging, hence the motion poster design. I will add the video in the USB as part of the portfolio, attaching it to the pdf will be a bit slower to open, because of the size.
REFLECTION I enjoyed working on this project with Ruby, because I recognised that our group dynamic are quite hardworking, therefore, for me it flows really well. And that we both are quite open experimenting- therefore, as reflected in the portfolio- we have made quite a lot of experimenting and see which one works or not. And I guess that is why the work in the portfolio reflects on how much I enjoyed my time working with Ruby. And even tough this work doesn’t reflect my life personally, one of the reasons why I put this on my portfolio- is to reflect on how team dynamic is very important to achieve better result. And this realisation makes me learnt greatly on how to choose better team player.