Reflective Publication on Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio by Skyla Harris

Doing + Thinking A Reflective Publication

Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

Contents Identity Design

004

Wayfinding Design

010

Information Design

014

Studio Knowledge Object

Studio Practice

Designer Profile

Doing + Thinking

018

024

026

Executive Summary This reflective publication aims to provide readers with an insight into the practice and processes undertook to achieve the final outcomes of each studio brief. A critical reflection on the Identity Design, Wayfinding Design and Information Design project outcomes is provided in order to gain a deeper understanding into the design thinking, processes and challenges encountered in the creation of each solution. Finally, as a result of this critical thinking, a Studio Knowledge Object project was developed in response. The studio knowledge object asks students to reflect critically on their design work and articulate visually and in text what they learnt through producing their design responses to their studio option's brief. In response, an archival publication was developed as an extension on the Information Design project for The Living Museum of the West. As a result, further reflection has been demonstrated on the designer's entire studio practice and approach to future design solutions as outlined in this publication.

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Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

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Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

Identity Design

This studio centred around the practice of identity design questions the state of branding and identity for the client, Museum Accreditation Program (MAP) and their second branch Community Museum Accreditation Program (CMAP). The developing in technology and the digitalisation of a brand forces for rapid changes to be made in visual communication. I experience what it was like to work within the parameters and restrictions of the evolving landscape and challenges of social normalities of identity design on a personal, cultural and political level.

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MAP is a peer-review accreditation program managed by Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMAGA), which supports Victorian galleries, museums and heritage spaces to ethically preserve and manage collections that enrich their community settings. MAP provided our studio with a brief to design discrete logos for both MAP and CMAP which will provide the direction to cultivate a unique branding identity for both accreditation streams. The logos and identity applications needed to show a clear distinction between both branches but also illustrate some commonality. It was important to the MAP team that the identity was to communication the importance of people and connections. The visual identity I created for both MAP and CMAP intends to reflect themes of growth amongst people and museum collections. The identity developed illustrates the organisations' ability to adapt to our rapidly evolving contemporary context and their move to the digital space. The visual identity of both MAP and CMAP streams intends to communicate to the public and their stakeholders what they value and represent as an institution. It is important for this new visual identity to illustrate the organisation's ability to remain relevant and to be current with the times. The themes of growth, connection and being limitless in their work will be the key branding identity for the institution. that the scope of design thinking to follow the process

This brief was challenging because of the number of applications required to be produced for this outcome. It was definitely challenging to manage my time effectively during this design sprint. I also found it difficult understanding what the client was looking for in in the outcome of the brief they had provided. I appreciated the experience pitching to a client and getting direct feedback on their thoughts and interpretation of my design solution. Upon reading, Bryan Lawson's academic writings on 'How Designers Think, Towards a Model of Designing', how 'the kinds of knowledge that may enter into a design solution are practically limitless'. This was not only evident listening to the wide range of design outcomes that my peers had developed but also my own approach and solution to difficult design briefs. Lawson highlights of Formulation, Representing, Moving, Brining Problems and Solutions Together. The process that I followed to produce my final design solution was Initial Research, Experimentation and then Formulation. I looked for inspiration in international museum, galleries, universities and other institutional branding examples. Some initial examples that I took interest in were from The University of Theatre and Film in Budapest, British Ceramics Biennale, National Museum in Warsaw and Philadelphia Museum of Art. I searched for examples that recently had a re-branding of their identity, that was contemporary and distinctively different from

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their counterparts. I then began with the experimentation of drawing intersecting shapes and lines to create new alternative spaces and connections that would later become the grounding theme of MAP's identity I established. After hand drawing different outcomes, I then digitised line drawings using Illustrator to formulate two different logos for both MAP and CMAP. I intended to make the logos patterns and line work distinctively different but also created with the same techniques and design approach to illustrate that the two streams are linked. The formulation step in my design process was seen in the application of this final logo used across all outcomes and assets created for MAP and CMAP. If this project was to be extended, I would like to experiment and learn animation design. The incorporation of animation and motion with the drawings that I created would further illustrate symbolism of digital growth, expansion and change that MAP continues to experience and embrace.

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Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

Wayfinding Design

The Wayfinding Design Studio brief proposed a solution for Heide Museum of Modern Art new reconciliation project, 'Yaluk Langa' (River's Edge) along the Birrarung River (Yarra River). This new project was in collaboration with Heide Museum of Modern Art, the Wurrundjeri Woiwurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and landscape architects from Urban Initiatives who have been commissioned to adapt a prescient within the grounds of Heide Museum to cast a pre-colonial lens on the sacred river area. Heide explained that they sought to enhance and curate a re-well as addressing the needs of all stakeholders involved.

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seeding of native and indigenous plants in the area and create a meeting place for Traditional owners of the land to gather for ceremonies and learning programs. The proposed brief prompts for a series of communication design elements and wayfinding concepts for this area of significance. The Heide team highlighted the importance of acknowledging and incorporating themes of allyship, landscape and reconciliation as well as addressing the needs of all stakeholders involved. This project allowed for the development of creative design solutions to communication design problems in a collaborative environment that has rich historical and cultural significance to Indigenous Traditional Owners using contemporary technology, methods and techniques. It was important that before I approached any design solution development that I reflected on current industry trends in wayfinding design but also to do extensive research on the importance of the site to Traditional Owners and how I as a designer should approach and acknowledge reconciliation and allyship in my own practice. It was important that in my practice not just for my project but across my studio practice to understand the sensitives around the Yaluk Langa location and the stories embedded within it as well as the need for minimal intervention to the land and flora. The creative solution to this brief needed to allow a space for the voices of Traditional Owners of the Land and Indigenous communities.

The wayfinding elements I created across this project aimed to blend into the landscape and have minimal interference with its native surroundings. The wayfinding course aimed to be clear in its navigational purpose but also engage with and build upon allyship as well as reconciliation. This wayfinding project considers use of materials, colour and pattern to create a distinct precinct with its own story and identity. Whilst also being sensitive of the traditional owners and communities in which this site is located on. The signage across the wayfinding site will be made from a powder coated galvanized iron. This material has been well-proven in outdoor environments, especially in Australian seasons. This material also allows for the opportunity to paint in unique colours that will seamlessly blend with the native environment found on the Heide Museum site. This powder coated steel is highly durable over time and is unlikely to be degraded by solar radiation. This material is ideal for a space such as Heide's as signs will not need to be upgraded until a long period of time has passed. These signs will be coated in with a matte rather than a gloss to blend in with the wayfinding path around the bushland. This project was the most challenging and difficult brief to work on as a part of this studio class. I was challenged by the creation of physical renderings and drawings to visualise the wayfinding course. I was unsure how to communicate my visualisation of this wayfinding course to the

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clients. I learnt that I needed to develop my confidence in technical drawing and 3D rendering and this is skill I hope to cultivate in my practice. Schön attests that 'when a practitioner reflects in and on his practice, the possible objects of his reflection are as varied as the kinds of phenomena before him and the systems of knowing-inpractice that he brings to them. He may reflect on the tacit norms and appreciations that underlie a judgment, or on the strategies and theories implicit in a pattern of behaviour' (Schön, 2010). I reflected on my outcome again after I presented my concept and ideas to my peers and made some further progress and changes that greatly affected my final outcome. I received feedback that I needed to push my visualisations and drawings further in order to affectively communicate my wayfinding concept. I reflected on the way in which I was trying to frame the design problem I was trying to solve and re-evaluated my approach. I drew my focus on materiality of the wayfinding course. This allowed me to set the dimensions of 'the problem space' and 'create moves to find solutions' (Schön, 2010).

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Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

Information Design

This studio project focused on creation a creative solution through the techniques and methods of an information design practice. The Living Museum of the West is a community museum which actively involves the community in Melbourne's western suburbs. They intend to document, preserve and interpret the richness and depth of the community's social, industrial and environmental history. The brief was provided by The Living Museum of the West, who requested for an engagement with their archives to create a timeline suitable for display to public audiences. The timeline needed to communicate aspects of the history

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of the museum and the park that it is located within and how people have interacted with the broader site over time. The timeline I developed was intended to be exhibited within the Living Museum of the West's heritage listed bluestone building, which also involved the display of original pieces of archival material. This project allowed me to practice my skills in analysing historical material and its social relevancy in our contemporary context. It also allowed me to carefully organise and curate archival material that could be accessible and enjoyed by public audiences. The timeline I created has been designed to be exhibited in The Living Museum of the West is heritage bluestone building. The timeline is intended to be installed from the roof to hang vertically down from the ceiling so it can be viewed from the ground floor and the mezzanine. The timeline would hang like a mobile, with the incorporation of screen printed and painted elements as a way of communicating historical archival material in less alienating and exclusive way. The timeline acts as a way of communicating history but is also interactive, participatory and inclusive through the way individuals move through the timeline and can just view the images and paintings or read the historical material. The symbols of plants, seeds and flowers that can be found along the Maribyrnong River. I approached this brief through an experimentation and research into installation art and experience design.

I wanted to create an informative timeline that not only highlighted the collected archival information but also established connections, relationships and interactions between the timeline and the audience. I wanted to create a timeline that felt personal to the community and stepped away from traditional curation of museum exhibitions. Through this brief I intended to explore and extend my studio practice beyond just digital graphic creation but also to incorporate painting techniques. Taken from the writings of Dr Neal Haslem, 'The Bauhaus developed a studio-teaching model with studio classes led by established practitioners in the diverse design fields' textiles, interiors, type design, visual communication. The studio classes passed on knowledge and ways of looking, seeing and knowing through design' (Haslem, 2015). I explored an alternative approach to information design by incorporating painted symbols of the plants, seeds and flowers that are found along the Maribyrnong River. This enhanced the community feeling that I intended to create in my timeline solution. I this experimental element of my design solution allowed for a 'a new unity of art and technology' (Haslem, 2015). The most challenging aspect of this brief was again the creation of effective visualisations and renderings to communicate my design solution to the client and audience. I tested new tools in photoshop to achieve the hanging effect that is a central part of my timeline installation.

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was to further develop this skill I would like to practice with more 3D rendering software to further create more effective ways to communicate my ideas and concepts to the viewing audience. I greatly enjoyed the process of collecting and constructing a timeline from the material provided by The Living Museum of the West. This process of carefully curating and organising a piece of work to communicate aspects of community, relationships and history built along the river was a very interesting and rewarding project to work on. I felt this project allowed me to explore a multitude of creative directions and experiment with different approaches to display interesting pieces of history.

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Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

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Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio

Studio Knowledge Object

The Studio Knowledge Object project allows students to be critically reflective on their design practice across the studio projects and also apply their learnings in a selfdirected project, being the studio knowledge object artefact. It asks of students to adopt a critical thinking approach to the final artefact but also reflect on the outcomes that they have developed throughout the studio workshop. Design education traditionally has an understanding of design and designers to encompass the expert knowledge and ownership of creative solutions to difficult problems through the following of a design process.

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However, it is an important step in design education and design practice to facilitate critical reflection in order to prompt 'diverse world-views' and 'alternative futures' which allows us to move away from traditional design-centric views that might be holding us back (Haslem, 2015). According to Haslem, 'the studio knowledge object asks students to reflect critically on their design work and articulate visually and in text what they learnt through producing their design responses to their studio option's brief' (Haslem, 2015). The Studio Knowledge Object project had no media constraints with the opportunity to formulate a completely new design brief or build on a project brief that we had already worked on earlier in the studio workshop. I formulated a brief that extended on the project for the Living Museum of the West. I saw a lot of potential to utilise the extensive archival material that the Living Museum of the West had collected to build upon ideas of community, people and connections between the Maribyrnong River and the site. The brief I created is outlined as the following: To create an 'engagement of archival material in the creation of a publication that illustrates the relationships, history and community created along the Maribyrnong River. This brief will draw upon the construction and organisation of archival material using collaging and layering techniques accompanied with written records'. The primary target audience is intended to reach those who will visit the exhibitions at The Living Museum

of the West and community members who live in Melbourne's Western Suburbs. The final outcome of my studio knowledge object project adopts processes used across information Design and publication design. The finalised SKO is the creation of a short publication for the Living Museum of the West. The publication is a completely visual timeline intended to illustrate the community created along the river in West Melbourne. The archives will be constructed in a collagelike format to draw connections between people, space and community. The publication contains minimal written archival material, moving away from a traditional museum setting. I usually start my design process by experimenting with practical elements of the project. I collected my first pieces of archival material for the publication and experimented with layering and collaging digitally on Illustrator. I devised what layering and collaging techniques I wanted to use throughout the publication and then started to collect as much archival material that I could find provided by the Living Museum of the West online. As the Living Museum of the West are in the process of digitising all of their archives to an online format, there was minimal written records online and I would have liked to incorporate more sources into the publication in the future. I also looked outside of the Living Museum of the West's archives to find other significant historical images of the Melbourne's west to make sure that the publication was completed with enough images

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and documents to meet my brief requirements. This self-directed project allowed me to provide a deeper insight into the history of Melbourne's western suburbs. This studio knowledge object has prompted me 'to step aside from the work that I have produced as a designer and consider what this work might mean for the practice that I aim to pursue in the world' (Haslem, 2015). I have also enjoyed creating works with collaging and use of layering techniques. I also incorporated drawing techniques as evident in the line and pattern work throughout the publication and cover to symbolise the Maribyrnong River. This has become a common theme and aspect of my design practice that I think will be evident in any design work that I pursue in the future. 'This is a profoundly different understanding to that which sees design as an aesthetic act engaging with the materials of a situation to solve a problem' (Haslem, 2015). The Studio Knowledge Object allows us as designers to instead approach design as an act of making knowledge propositions manifest in the world, and the further act of stepping outside that act of knowledge production to examine what it in turn allows us to know (Haslem, 2015).

Studio Practice

Upon reflection of the project outcomes completed in the Communication Design Entrepreneurship Studio, challenged my approach to my own design process and prompted me to think towards my design future. Throughout this project I have implemented some practical and tactile art making skills to each outcome. I believe by incorporating other disciplines and techniques into my own design process will allow for the diversification ideas and design futures. I have incorporated drawing and painting elements across my studio outcomes. This adds a further aesthetic layer to my final created outcomes. I have also been able to push my visual art practice by digitising a lot of these skills and methods to create effective solutions and outcomes. The Bauhaus developed a studioteaching model with studio classes led by established practitioners in the diverse design fields' textiles,

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interiors, type design, visual communication (Haslem, 2015). The studio classes passed on knowledge and ways of looking, seeing and knowing through design (Haslem, 2015).'Traditionally, from Bauhaus on, a student designer's conversation has been between their practice and their material' (Haslem, 2015). Although this process has allowed for iterative development to refine quality designers there has been a movement towards more human and user centred design practices and understandings. Moving away from reflecting on my design process in a practical sense, I believe this revolution in design education and practice will bring about a focus on public needs, desires and world-views as designers create effective solutions to meaningful and difficult problems. This movement will greatly adapt the approach to my own studio practice as I attempt to create solutions that are centred around the needs and wants of the consumer. This is evident across all of my final studio outcomes, as I attempted to always consider the interaction and reaction of the user to my final design solution. As attested by Haslem, it allows for us as designers to 'take serious steps to shift the power balance from designers to the users of the designed world' (Haslem, 2015). It is important that understand in our own design practice that the designer constructs the design world in which they live and work in. It is asserted that designers 'set the dimensions of their problem space' and 'invents the moves by which they find and create solutions' (Schön, 1992).

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Personal Profile

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Skyla Harris My name is Skyla, and I am currently studying a Master of Communication Design. I have recently completed a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) also at RMIT University. I made the move to Melbourne three and a half years ago from a small country town in New South Wales called Bowral Gandangara. I made the move to Melbourne Naarm, because I wanted to experience what it was like to live in a culturally thriving city that is well known for its creative art and design scene. I am naturally a creative person, so I find passion and enjoyment for design and visual arts. This passion is evident in my daily life as I photography my surroundings, still life, friends as I seek to capture the creative opportunities that others may not see. I also find passion in my own artistic design practice as I have begun my own online/social media design account which mostly showcase my multimedia prints at the moment. I also find enjoyment in reading and learning about new issues through podcasts, blogs and books to get a scope on the latest consumer craze as I am also passionate in learning about brand relationships and have long admired creative brand campaigns. So far, in my design education I have found a new passion to experiment with typography design and make new alphabet typeforms and glyps. I also have enjoyed combining my technical communication design skills with my personal visual art practice which incoporates, painting, drawing and printmaking processes.

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References Ammon,S., 2015. Reflection-in-action: Donald Schöen Reconsidered, Paris Descartes University Insititue of Psychology, pp. 1-9. Haslem, N., 2021. Alternative World-Making Through Design: Reflecting on Potentials for ContemporaryDesign Education. Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, 1(1), pp.1-9. Schön, D., 1992. Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Knowledge-Based Systems, 5(1), pp.3-14. Schön, D., 2010. Design as a reflective practice Collection, Parsons Paris School of art and design, Art + Design + Psychology, pp.21-25. Lawson, B,, 2005. Towards a Model of Designing, The Structure of Design Problem Spaces, pp. 288-304.

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