A conversation by KatDunbobbin

A Conversation Kat Dunbobbin

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Research Influences Ideas Development Concept Final Ideas Final Designs Analysis What is a conversation? . A Conversation with yourself?

Who has researched this before? . What were their findings?

Basic Ideas outlined

Development of 2 key ideas

A final concept that I will use in my chosen piece

The most promising ideas of each concept & Origami

Each section of the final designs

My analysis of the project and my response to it

What is a Conversation The official definition of a conversation states that it is:

ld also be used to describe a relationship or any transfer of information from one party to another. This I think leaves the idea of what a conversation is up to interpretation.

A Conversation with yourself? I look into the different interpretations of the idea of having a conversation with your own personal subconcious.

What have I been asked? In the first brief of this year we were asked to look into and conceptualise â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Conversationâ&#x20AC;?. This could be as abstract or literal as we interpret it to be and the idea of a conversation I think could also contain the concept of a relationship or data exchange. This I think will prove to be a very open brief and therefore free but difficult, one of the most difficult aspects of an open brief is staying on topic and keeping your designs concise. Its all well and good producing a large range and variety of ideas but if they are so far fetched and distant from each other the likelihood that they will link back to brief is far more slim. With this in mind, I aim to set out with a large expanse of ideas and then reign them back in as I develop each one, as I go eliminating those which I think would be unfit for the brief at hand or not interesting enough to fulfil it to its entirety.

The Micro Brief We started by acquiring a newspaper article and using it to ignite a conversation which we could then analyse, I chose an article which talked about the fragile nature of student life and how incompetent students are, safe to say this caused a slightly opinionated rant from most of the conversation participants, this showed me that conversation can be broken down into subsections such as: - A Point, and its maker - an opposer and defender of the point - a voice of reason. From this micro brief I was able to analyse the use of language and think about possible ways of graphically representing them. After thinking about this for a while I quicky realised that I was more interested in looking at a conversation or relationship not between seperate poeple but rather between that of a person and their surrounding or objects or even between a person and their own mind. This thought intrigued me to look in to how

other people had described conversations and categrorized them; if a conversation doesnt have to be spoken then what is it and what is the difference between that and a relationship or a reaction.

My Plans I plan to research into how some designers have used multiplicity and the idea of combing people and ideas, this should be useful because at its core the point of a conversation is that more than one point of view is involved. Also I would like to experiment with typography and colour. These are both brilliant ways to get across subtle indicators such as emotional transfer and a specific asthetic to designs. I hope that layout will play a small part in this project too, I enjoy making my work clean cut and I think that would give me the chance to produce something more client based because at the end of the day I like my work to have purpose therefore it should always be presentable.

One designer who has lo is a man named Peter C soundwaves as design p conversation will be utter

Not only this but his int piece, by sowing the sou canvas he makes the pie well as by being seen or interactivity makes work work is something

Who has already researched this? Has anybody already researched this idea and if so what could I take from it that would be interesting?

Peter Crawley

ooked at and used the idea of conversations in his work Crawley, his work uses the the graphic representation of pieces. I think that this interesting because obviously each rly unique and in a way create its own flow and emotional output. teresting use of textures adds more dimension to each undswaves useing thread and a needle through card or ece a physical object that can be felt thourgh touch as r simply understood as a concept. In my opinion this extra more dynamic and I think the use of 3 dimentions in his g I would like to incorporate into my own designs.

Sophie Calle Sophie Calle on the other hand has used a massive extension of multiplicity in her work, she chose to use something specific from her own experiences to produce work based around a letter (“Conversation”) that her boyfriend had written to her in an attempt to end their relationship. She inspires me to take common place things and see how it changes from person to person, in her work, she chose to ask women all over the world to react to her letter as if it had been written to them, their responses came in all differnt forms of design, from the poetic to the analytic and the scientific to the abstract creative. Each responded in a differnt way which she was then able to collate together to produce a hard hitting portfolio of work based around a single conversation which shows inatley that women will react with the same emotions to this no matter who they are but the way that they chose to expressit varies as much the people themselves.

Anthony Burrill Anthony Burrill website claims that, “Anthony Burrill is known for his persuasive, up-beat style of communication. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York and has been exhibited in galleries around the world including The Barbican, The Walker Art Centre and The Graphic Design Museum, Breda. Burrill is perhaps best known for his typographic, text-based compositions, including the nowfamous “Work Hard and Be Nice to People”, which has become a mantra for the design community and beyond.” I think that his typographic work is so strong and powerful, his use of Letterform and layout really uses and emphasizes negative space. This is definatley something that would work well with a campaign of any kind. I might find it useful to incorperate aspects of his design practice into work based around the environment and us, especially the Oil and Water dont mix project, by going out and finding differrnt resources such as the oil filled sand that he used. He found that by giving his designs a real purpose and reserching heavily into something that was important to him, he was able to produce highly skilled and emotive designs.

My initial Mind These mindmaps gave me a quick way to get down sort ideas that I would then be able to pickthrough to find some more suitable ones to either develop or use as my final project.

dmap

Idea 1 My first idea consists of the conversation or relationship between us and the environmant around us, how do we interact with each other and how do we change each other. It could be a very interesting subject to research further due to the many political and social issues that you could marge into with this subject matter. it could become an environmental propganda style Also you could branch into the more data controlled side of this subject, producing detailed data analysis posters, in the same way as an essay poster, using the data and making all sorts of designed and appropriate information representation charts. I like the way that this could be both very creative but clinical the issues that I have with this idea is that it has been looked at many times before and I feel like it is a typical and predictable route to go down.

Idea 2 Another Idea that I have drawn from my initial mindmaps based on the brief would be a conversation between man and his technology. Again this could produce a different style and interesting interpretation of the subject. I quite like the idea of either going very computer graphics orientated with it or flip it and produce a piece based on the idea of how can it be done without technology. Perhaps using the Oil and Water piece by Anthony Burrill I could imply how different work would be if we couldnt use certain tech, I would have to use other modes of prducing physical output such as screen printing, sowing, painting, drawing by hand or even letterpress. This would produce some beautiful work and could have really interesting message once put into a campaign to reduce technology and being more green, or a propoganda campaign to inform on the rise of robots. I would have the opportunity to go quite outlandish with this idea.

Idea 3 My third idea is to go down a more strange route with the interpretation of the word conversation. I will take it more in the sense of it being a relationship or a transfer or information between ourselves and each of our own subconciousâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. I like the idea of sharing memories of the conversations but perhaps looking at how it is we remember them or recall them from our memory banks could be a more interesting and abstract idea and would transfer to a graphical representation more easily, I think the other part of this that I think works well is that memory works not simply on an audio aspect but also touch, visual and emotive, focusing on sound itself would limit this brief. If I were to go with this specific idea I think I could run into problems when it comes to representing the link between side of the visual transfer of the memory. I need to find what it is that links them and use that as my graphical output. It is an interesting project based on a language with no words and no one persons experience or use of memories will be the same.

Idea 4 A data orientated idea would probably also work well on this project. Again taking the word conversation is a much more simplified sense but using the relationships between people and how they physically interact. An infographic representing this would work like a map of the social situation in certain areas. it would be good research to find out and examine how people subliminally act and to notice patterns in people, how they categorise and link together, where are the hotspots and where are the dips in social activity? To produce this I would probably run survey and observations in and around town documenting where people are and when. Hopefully i would be able to draw some conclusions to produce a meaningful design using the data.

Idea 1 - Development Having norrowed my ideas down, I am able to more clearly define those that remain and develop the concepts. My first idea for development is ased around our conversation as humans with technology, this mean that I could represent my ideas in many different ways and gives the the opportunity to use lots of different techniques, I could go one way with it where I use all computer graphics and produce a very clean cut design and show just how important the relationship is between

Idea 2 - Development Developing the concepts of two strong ideas should leave one clear concept that will work, this is the one I will choose. this idea has been developed by looking at different types of typography andhow they work in conjunction with each other

Final Concept Now I have my final concept chosen I am able to properly pinpoint specific aspects of the physical productions.

Summary The concept that I have chosen to continue looking into and producing designs for is the idea of having a conversation with your own subconcious, or more specifically the part of your brain that harbours memories. The way that we remeber things on a daily basis and thorughout our lives it to associate an event, person, object with a seperate external trigger. For example a smell might remind you of a person, or a sound might trigger a memory of when you last heard it. Pinpointing these triggers I think would be a brilliant way to summarize the conversation between our waking minds and the subconcious because it is those specific triggers that are the recieve and respond like the words that we use to communicate in simple everyday conversations.

How does this work Graphically? In a graphic sense I would like to produce a physical representation of the link between trigger and memory, hopefully using examples from the people around me I will work in a simular fashion to Sophie Calle in that I will accumulate memories from outside sources then analyse and design according to how other people react to this subject matter.

I hope that the different people that I speak to and use in this research would give me a variety of responses including, - Sad - Humourous - Strange - Meaningful It would be nice to try and use graphic language such as colour and emotive typography to produce subtle differences between essentially the same output for each memory/story that I am supplied with.

Does it have a purpose? I would like o think that my work would serve the purpose of making people think, I would like people to notice the link between different parts of our minds and perhaps go a little way to understnading how we think a little more. Knowledge is an inexhaughstable source and I think that our only limit is our own memories, understanding them better would be a brilliant purpose and I do hope that if nothing else people will understand the link that I am trying to portray through my work or even go further themselves and contribute to it by listing their own memories and the trigger that they feel recollects it for them.

Origami Why paper cranes? Different examples.

Robert J.Lang I have visited his website in an attempt to learn more about different ways to produce 3 dimensional objects. This is what he had to say, “Origami, like music, permits both composition and performance as expressions of the art. Over the past 35 years, I have developed over 480 original origami compositions. About a quarter of these have been published with folding instructions, which, in origami, serve the same purpose that a musical score does” He also claims that, “Origami can be used effectively in web, print, and television advertising and I have created commissioned pieces for several print, television, and animation projects.” This gives me hope that I could produce ‘Trigger items’ using this method. He also comission large works which he describes as, “Monumental origami is origami folded at large scale, from several feet to several meters in size.” This could produce some really fantastic extensions to the project.

Paper Cranes? Why are paper cranes used so often in raditional origami? well there is a belief that if you should fold a new crane at each happy event in your life, and if you fold 1000 before you die, it is said to bring you joy and peace in the afterlife. It is also consideredto be a good luck gift to present 1000 paper cranes on your wedding day. These are some of the reasons that I believe cranes are a good link to my ideas; because if you are folding them at happy events in your life each one should trigger a different memory, just life the triggers that I will look into for the memories that I collect.

Example 1 Memory 1 - The Washing Basket

The Memory

What I did

Improvements?

I came home from Yorkshire carrying this wash basket full of my clothes, from my holiday, and my mum opened the door I was immediately annoyed it was my mum that opened the door, so I asked where my dad was and she took the basket off me, put it on the stairs, and took me to the kitchen, I was then sat down at the table, and told that my dad had ben killed.

Here I have chosen to produce a prototype of the washing basket design in both type and origami to see how well the final output would work, i am pleased with hte results so far and hope that the final products do emphasize the message that I want them too.

Firstly, I think that I could vastly imprpove upon the typography aspect of this piece by simply spending some more time researching into the typefaces that I am including and working out which I should use to give off the correct vibe for the memory that I have chosen to portray. Another improvement that I would like to make would probably be to try and play with colours more effectively, although I do think that the purple works okay with this the black text on top does clash and i think distract from the message a little bit, also using my colour theory purple is associated with glamour and spiritualism or luxury; this memory is very sad and contains death and heartbreak a more suitable colour might be in the blue and green spectrum, perhaps teal or seafoam green. These to me are slightly more somber and still, this memory makes me think of time standing still and a large lack of warmth, that is why I will change the colour to one of the aforementioned.

Why I Chose it? I have used this memory because I feel that it is so full emotions, a powerful memory like that is a brilliant example of how such a commonplace item like a washing basket can trigger a massive emotional transfer from your subconcious to your immedite thoughts, hence the whole premise of my designs. Strong triggers can produce massive conversation between you and your subconcious.

My thoughts Now that I have attempted to make the typography poster into the trigger object for the memory I have realised some interesting things, such as: the way that the typography becomes a pattern once folded until it is unreadable works very well and I feel fits very well with the metaphor of having something written all over your face. In this case your memory is literally written all over whatever the item is that triggered it. I like that this idea works on multiple levels, and although I am happy with how the concept is transforming into artwork there are some changes that I plan to make.

Example 2 Memory 2 - Monkey Forest

The Memory

What I did

Improvements?

Me and my boyfriend were driving to Trentham Monkey Forest with his brother, sister and her boyfriend, on the way back, we had music on very loudly and we were dancing, as we did so, we rolled straight into the back of the vehicle in front. It makes me smile because it was an event that encompasses both happy times and the irony of life.

Here I have chosen to produce a prototype of the monkey design in both type and origami to see how well the final output would work, i am pleased with hte results so far and hope that the final products do emphasize the message that I want them too.

Firstly, I think that I could vastly imprpove upon the typography aspect of this piece by simply spending some more time researching into the typefaces that I am including and working out which I should use to give off the correct vibe for the memory that I have chosen to portray. Another improvement that I would like to make would probably be to try and play with colours more effectively, although I do think that the red works okay with this the white text on topworks well in contrast, also using my colour theory red is associated with passion, hatred and love; this memory is more humourus and lighthearted a more suitable colour might be in the yellow and orange spectrum, perhaps lemon or chocolate brown These to me are slightly more chilled and light, less vibrant also. This memory makes me think of time standing still and a large sense or warmth, that is why I will change the colour to one of the aforementioned

Why I Chose it? I have used this memory because I feel that it is a lighter and more humourous story which gives me the opportunity to use a brighter colour scheme and experiment with more outrageous typography. I think that this experiment of type has been more sucsessful than the last but again it could still use developments, there are areas where the readability has been diminished and I like the use of the circles and lines this could be more ephasized.

Example 3 Memory 3 - Romeo & Juliet

The Memory

What I did

Improvements?

Whenever I eat fresh mozzarella and oil, I am reminded of the farm in Italy, when I visited the family for the wedding and watched my cousin serenade his bride by climbing to her window with flowers. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, I loved how happy and peaceful everyone felt that day and can still smell the Italian roses whenever I think of it.

Here I have chosen to produce a prototype of the rose design in both type and origami to see how well the final output would work, i am pleased with the results so far and hope that the final products do emphasize the message that I want them too.

Firstly, I think that I could vastly imprpove upon the typography aspect of this piece by simply spending some more time researching into the typefaces that I am including and working out which I should use to give off the correct vibe for the memory that I have chosen to portray. Another improvement that I would like to make would probably be to try and play with colours more effectively, although I do think that the pink works really well with this the white type on top does creduce the readability and I think distract from the message a little bit, also using my colour theory pale pink is associated with children, romance, and sweet things; this memory is romantic and sweet but a more suitable colour for the type might be in the blue and green spectrum, perhaps teal or seafoam green. These to me are slightly more mature colours, this memory makes me think of time standing still and a large sense of awe, that is why I will change the colour to one of the aforementioned

Why I Chose it? I have used this memory because I feel that it is so full emotions, a romantic and peaceful memory like that is a brilliant example of how beautiful item like a flower or even its frangrance can trigger a massive emotional transfer from your subconcious to your immedite thoughts, hence the whole premise of my designs. Strong triggers can produce massive conversation between you and your subconcious.

Final Design Washing Basket The final Parts all brought together of the Washing Basket Memory.

This is the final set of designs for this memory. I am happy with the outcomes so far but I fell like I could still improve these and I may still do so, but for now I am happy with the typography posters and the origami pieces I think that the way they work together is a beautiful but simple technique. The idea to produce a simplified poster of both of these aspects at work was one that I got after researching more into Anthony Burrill, his simplified poster were so bold and in your face I loved how they spoke to you so I chose to research some more into minimal poster design and started to produce more with my pieces and I think that they work well.

Final Design Monkey Forest The final Parts all brought together of the Monkey Forest Memory.

Final Design Monkey Forest The final Parts all brought together of the Romeo & Juliet memory.

Project Analysis How did I find the project as a whole, what would i change?

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Kat Dunbobbin A Conversation Published: 02/11/14