they made us {issue one}
“THEY LIKE TO BELIEVE I’M THE PERFECT CHILD THEY TAUGHT ME TO BE.”
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they made us {intoducion}
HI, INSERT N A M E H E R E If I could be anyone it would be...I have no freaking idea. For now I’m pretty happy being me, made by Debbie and Glendon Hancock, as much as I don’t like to think about my parent’s “making” anything, they did an ok job, I think. They like to believe I’m the perfect child they taught me to be, but sometimes I’ve strayed in my 20 years of being me, moving out of home at 16 will do that to anyone I think, sorry mum and dad.
My parents biggest mistake I think was sending me to Boarding School, it was there that I learnt some valuable life lessons, not the ones they teach in the classrooms but the ones you learn through trail and error, thanks mum. Their next biggest mistake was letting me travel to Europe; it was there that all of these trailed life lessons came into play, I definitely ran into a few new ones too along the way. And their third was sending me to college...
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they made us {about me}
Hi, I’m Kristen Hancock “I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING MOST OF THE TIME.” IT’S A COUNTRY THING
HOSTELS AND BUSES
Where I come from there is one set of traffic lights, the supermarket is owned by my uncle, we know the name of every person we pass on the street, and everyone has a running bar tab at the local pub. Places like this still exist. I grew up on a farm thirty-five kilometres out of our local town of St. Arnaud in Central Victoria. My primary school had one hundred and fifty kids and highschool two hundred and fifty, my mum being one of the staff members, those days were joyful. After school we would go to the roadhouse, get hot chips and I’d wait until my mum was ready to pick me up and take me home, if I could go back in time it would be to these afternoons with first boyfriends and naivety at it’s best.
All I knew when I finished school was that I wanted money and I wanted to travel. Getting money was harder than I thought, and travelling was everything is was meant to be with it’s fair amount of missing buses and lost friends. I still hit myself when I realise that I saw seven countries in three months, watched naked gay men dance on stage at a music festival in Hungary, nearly suffocated while witnessing huge Spanish men climb up a pole to reach a leg of ham at Le Tomitina in Valencia, saw four Bulls stabbed to death in a crazy Spanish Bullfight, celebrated the equivilent of Australia Day with the Bastilles in San Sebastian with marching bands, canons and indecent exposure. Found clubs with men in nothing but bowties pouring free vodka on the Champs de Elysee in Paris, road through the Swiss Alps in the snow, slept on the streets of Florence after a misplaced hostel, road donkeys to boats in Santorini and sung ridiculous German songs at Oktoberfest. Europe was...Europe, I’ll always be grateful but I was glad to come home.
FRIED FRIDAYS I feel like things began once I got to boarding school. I moved two hours from home, shared one room with two other girls and a house with forty others. Combine one hundred and twenty teenage girls with one hundred and twenty teenage boys and there will be too many rules to even begin to think about sticking to. I had no idea what I was doing most of time, I followed a lot, followed the girls that knew how to get what they want when they wanted, until eventually I realised somewhere along the way between sixteen and eighteen I figured out how to get what I wanted too. This came with consequences, ones my parents certainly didn’t expect of me and ones I never seemed to learn from. I was stupid and disrespectful but I think it made me grow up atleast a little bit, I hope.
FRESHER POINTS And then there is college, crazy dress up parties with way too much alcohol provided, the food is like boarding school but the rules certainly aren’t, I’ve definitely changed a lot too. I’m now three hours from home and find myself meeting, finding and doing new things everyday. College is fun and I’ve found some of my best friends here but I’m waiting to find another home away from home and to actually “live” in Melbourne where a whole new chapter will begin I suspect.
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they made us {about me}
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7.
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1. my sewing kit 2. my sandals 3. my brown boots 4. my film cameras 5. my charm bracelet and necklace 6. my typewriter 7. my favourite magazines 8. my favourite photo of my mum 9. my cutting mat 10. my favourite jacket 11. my make-up 12. my coffee mugs 13. my guitar 14. my most used items 15. my most favourite place in the world
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they made us {manifesto}
A
s
M fEt
It’s overwhelming the amount of inspiration I can find on the web, while having several Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and InDesign files open, thank you Mac. 4. trail and error and error and error
design manifesto
“GET OUT THERE...SHARE YOUR IDEAS. Find your kinships. Start something new. TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE...”Edie Sedgewick and film director Ray Wisniewski in conversation at Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the ‘The Don’ in New York,
1966.
WHILE I may be a young designer, only beginning my first year of Design this year, I’ve learnt too much over the past two years to not let it infiltrate my work and design ethics. Don’t get me wrong I love Australia but seeing the way Europeans have no prejudices or what seems like rules when it comes to design and the creative industry really drives me in a way that makes it hard to follow instructions. I had a job interview the other day where they asked us to sell our partners passion in one minute. I was racking my brain trying to describe design to my partner to help her out, until I finally verbally vomitted all over her that design was literally everywhere and everything and it’s the only
thing I ever want to do or ever could do, she must of heard something in my voice because she sold Graphic Design like it was her god damn life. So here is my design manifesto, but once again I’m not that good at abiding by it but I hope most of these things have or will come naturally to me.
1. “You have to go and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven” Jimi Hendrix If we could all be as crazy as Jimi Hendrix, design would probably look like it was on a hallucinogenic trip all the time; but crazy is good, crazy is what makes you stop and actually notice. If you aren’t crazy then design probably isn’t the best option. 2. “don’t ever leave me! ever!” wedding crashers What’s better than one crazy creative brain? A whole heap of them being crazy together. Theres so many of us out there, it’s one of the most competitve industries, it’s best to stick together, you can’t do it alone, I know I definitely can’t. 3. back to the future Before I came to University my most valuable possessions were my notepad and fine liners. While I still very much appreciate them and still couldn’t do without them, it’s now my laptop and internet speed that I literally couldn’t live without.
Being a first year student, I don’t know much, I know I’ll certainly be learning forever, but I think I’ve discovered the best things so far through making mistakes, and not being scared to make them either. 5. open your ears, you’ll see wonders
Every individual is more complex than we could ever imagine, their ideas, ambitions and desires will effect and change you forever, only if you listen though. 6. don’t rush, don’t rush don’t rijds doshnt erusj Deadlines are always going to come too soon and I’m the best for leaving it to the absolute last minute but I can always tell when I’ve done a bodge job just because I’ve put it off and off and off. 7. spring break!!!!!!!!!!!!! The world is beyond being ridiculously big, it’s overwhelmingly huge, and will have an unimaginable effect if seen in real life instead of on a TV set, even if its HD widescreen. 8. get hurt, throw yourself at inaminate objects
Not really but allow yourself to let go and be sad, deep
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they made us {manifesto}
The First Things First
“you can’t do it alone, i know i can’t” photograph:
Kristen Hancock
down in there is something of great value. One of my favourite albums is Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, I don’t think it would of been half as good or even exist if it wasn’t for a broken heart. 9. loose track of time Early hours of the morning do something to you, something that seperates you from the rest of them. 10. for fame and money? Just do it for yourself
Overall, and certainly as a young designer, I think it’s really important not to take yourself too seriously. Instead of beating yourself up about how good you could be or that someone out there is always going to be better than you, think you are that person and that you are as good as you can be in that point in time. Or else you’ll lose yourself somewhere in there between the line of appropriation and copying, not having your own style to recognize and own.
Bruce Mau Design’s, Incomplete Manifesto For Growth is something I can really relate to and even influenced my own design manifesto. I think this is something every young designer should read before they get into unbreakable bad habits or just don’t really know what they are doing in the first place. Growth, in my opinion, is one of the most important things to strive for within the creative industry these days, the competitiveness is overwhelming, growth will stand it’s ground, as long as you can achieve it, reading the ‘Incomplete Manifesto for Design’ would be a very good start. Learning some valuable points like, ‘forget about good, good is a known quantity, good is what we all agree on,’ and ‘don’t be cool, cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from these sort of limits.’ An extremely valuable read.
Manifesto 2000 by Eye Magazine and multiple artists, looks at the renewal of the 1964 call for a change of prioroties. This involved 22 visual communicators, includingt the likes of Milton Glaser and Erik Spiekermann, signing an original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use, instead of perhaps commercial and product marketing. While I do agree that there are many ‘social marketing campaigns, books, mags, exhibitions, educational tools...and other information design project’s that need our help, I also think it’s a cutthroat world out there and not necessarily one where we can pick and choose what we focus our design energy on, especially as a young emerging designer. However it is something that needs to be taken into huge consideration and perhaps infiltrated into our design schools a little bit more.
The Society Of Graphic Designers of Canada members all subscribe to their GDC Code of Ethics, allowing for a uniformed practice with an air of brilliant professionalism. It instils responsibility into the designer in relation to the organization and profession, to other members within the organization, to clients and employers and to society and the environment as a whole. It also importantly includes intelluectual property and authorship guidlines.
While many may think a code of ethics may be restrictive and interfere with creative boundaries: I find these code of ethics are a natural responsibilty and should be taken on by any practising graphic designer as a way of reverence for their work and business. After all it’s not all fun and games when it comes to art and design, we need to consider these elements more carefully.
The AIGA Standards of Professional Practice are very similar to the GDC code of ethics, I may be a young designer therefore feel these ethics and standards to be a bit dry but I still understand their great importance within the creative industry. AIGA Standards of Professional Practice also make sure designers adhere to a set of principles and responsibilities that ‘demonstrate respect for the profession’. Again I feel like my careeer is too young to begin to understand the legalitites of working in the industry but I think both AIGA and GDC present a formal and professional standard of ethics and practice. I love Reactive’s positive and brief discription of their team values, especially their emphasis on their inclusion of clients into their design team. I also love how involved they are in charities and the community, giving off a very positive and friendly vibe; as a beginner I would be drawn to somewhere exactly like this. KH.
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they made us {divided up}
45%
60%
THINKING
about what I will do next
SEEING
what my parents wanted me to see
25%
18%
15%
about who I will see next
what they had no control over
about what I have just done
10%
11%
about who I have just seen
what I’ve been shown with and without consent
5% in transition
6% what Europe showed me
5%
seeing the unknown
85% FEELING lucky
7% content
4% ridiculous
3%
confused
1%
33%
unsure
TOUCHING
my computer keyboard
24% food and drink
18% my hair, face and clothes
14%
my friends and family
11%
miscellaneous
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they made us {divided up}
Think
See
Divide Me Up It’s a difficult thing to think about thinking, and even harder to stop and dessever the different parts of your life in a pie graph. But once you see important parts of you in statistics it makes you realise things are much smaller than they seem especially when it’s out of a hundred and divided into a number that means so little in the very big scheme of things.
Feel
Touch
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RMIT University, School of Media and Communication Communication Design GRAP2278 Design Studio F Designed and produced by Kristen Hancock Published 28/11/2011 Created usign Adobe InDesignCS5 Bodoni Std Book Bauer Bodoni Std 1 Bold Italics Bauer Bodoni Std 2 Black