GDE 710

WEEK 1

Introduction

If I am completely honest, I'm not quite sure what I've gotten myself into. It's been quite a few years since I got back to formally studying. I've wanted to pursue a Masters in graphic design since 2007. However, circumstances at the time led life another way. I've been working in the field as a design practitioner for the past 12 years now, and teaching for around 10. I've always kept tuned in to the design community by attending conferences and staying informed of what is going on. The pandemic changed all of that 2 years ago. And while I thought when it began that it wouldn't affect me much because I work from home anyways, I was wrong. I missed being out of touch and conferences online just didn't provide the immersive experience. As everything moved online, I thought it would be the best time to begin further study. And while a part of me is excited, I'm wondering if I can actually do it. I guess the best of us suffer from imposter's syndrome. So here I am, and here we go. Please bear with me, as I have no idea if any of what I am doing is 'right' or 'wrong'. Or if there is even a 'right' way to do this. So with that out of the way, my intention is to enjoy the journey, play and experiment with ways I've not tried before, and see if I can become a better designer along the way.

Thank you 🙏🏼 for sharing this journey with me.

Who? What? Where? Why?

  Who are you?     (Name, background, influences, what makes you you?) 
  What is it that you do?     (Showcase a pivotal project or moment in your practice) 
  Where are you?     (Geographically and does this have an impact on how you work?) 
  Why Design?     (What does design mean to you? What does it do?) 

This week, these questions remained in the background while I navigated through all the lectures, resources and case studies. I found it very interesting how each practitioner had a different way they answered these questions for themselves. What interested me most is how out of touch I was with myself and my practice and why I do the things that I do, and why I design the way I design. Design has always been an integral part of me. I live, breathe, sleep, eat design. For the last few years, however, design has become less personal and more for the clients and organizations I design for. In that sense when I look at my old work, I find more of me in them. More of my personal voice. I'm beginning to discover, that a part of me misses not induging more and exploring those areas. 

You could say that by hearing each of the practioners in the case studies answer these questions, I have in turn started seeing things about myself as a practitioner. Here, I share with you, some of my key takeaways  and reflections on the designers that really resonated with me this week.

Sarah Boris

SarahBoris_Header2

Design is a function and an aesthetic for me. It’s a way of living. It’s a way of communicating.

Sarah Boris

I don't know Sarah, and have not come across her work before. I assume that is because I have mostly spent my life either in North America: Canada and the United States, or in Pakistan. I found myself sharing a passion with Sarah for print, editorial, typography, and branding. She mentioned how her influences are "really wide and varied". When I think about it, variety is something I find myself drawn to a lot as I can get bored if I do the same kind of things over and over again. I always have to be trying something new, and that is what inspires me to practice design because I get to 'play'.

I am in love with her theatre posters that resulted from the "happy accident" she had. While I've had my share of 'happy accidents' what created a new opening for me as a design practitioner is the fact that she didn't just end the project there. She reimagined it into something else even after it was done—an animation and then a book. I have never thought this way before. Most of the time when I finish a project it is done and I move on to explore the next brief. I also connected this with something Joseph said on our second week webinar, the fact that once you've made something, can it be something else? What if this were an animation instead? Or a billboard? How would the design look in a different interpretation, for a different audience? And now that that bug is in my head, it has in a sense transformed me. Now I'm starting to look at a design, while creating it, and I keep thinking what if it were this and not just that. 

Sarah said design is an "aesthetic" for her, a way of "communicating" a way of "living". I think I would also use these words to describe what design is for me. The aesthetic part of design, the beauty of it is definitely something that is important to me. I want to make beauty and make things beautiful. It is one of the reasons I practice design. 

After watching the video of Sarah, I went and checked out some of her work. I love how bold and colourful it is. And in that sense this design aesthetic is something we both share. My quadriptych showcases this bold colourfulness. Sometimes when you get caught up in designing for a brand you miss being able to just create something for yourself in colours you would choose and not a client per se. So I went all out and had fun!  

Sam Winston

SamWinston_Header

I think there’s different ways of approaching design. I would argue… design is more of a verb than a noun. If you treat design as a noun, it’s a thing that’s solid and it’s what you do; I am a designer. I’ve always had a relationship with design as if it’s a verb, as a doing thing; it’s the way that you can go running you can do designing. So in that way, design is then applicable to multiple other things.

Sam Winston

I'm so delighted to get to know Sam Winston! I'm realizing just how out of touch I am with designers in the UK. What fascinates me about Sam's work is the way he describes the sacredness of the space in which he works. The fact that design originates very much not only from the practitioner but also from the environment in which it is designed. As I reflect on this I find that my best work has emerged when my space fascilitated the process. 

A part of me envies Sam that he has been able to do his work and find commisions for the type of work he does. I always saw that as being an artist as opposed to a designer. So in that sense I'm finding my own meanings changing, and that I have closed the door on that for myself in the past, simply because I didn't think it was something I could do. I think I haven't explored enough because graphic design became employment, and my work is a product of what I can do for client briefs. I'm discovering new openings for myself! That definitely excites me. Wow, it is only week 1! 

I really enjoy Sam's way of working with typography. It is so lyrical and so organic in the way he uses letters in his work. I like how he has also created designs by cutting out letters and pasting them. I've always worked with typography on the computer and never in analogue form. I am inspired to try working with typography in this way. The expressive use of typography is very interesting to me, and I am beginning to see how I've not allowed myself to explore it enough. So that is something I've decided to take on along my journey here with all of you. 

Paula Scher

PaulaScher_Header

You have to be in a state of play to design. If you’re not in a state of play, you can't make anything.

Paula Scher

Paula Scher is by far my favourite designer. She has been since I first read about her in a design culture course it seems eons ago. When I first fell in love with typography in the classroom I didn't know much about Paula Scher. I wasn't even a proper designer then. When I started playing with type, I could see how she had so much fun with it. I relate to type the way she does: "Typography is painting with words." I love words and couldn't agree with Paula more how spirit and meaning come alive with typography. It is by far my favourite design element. The fact that she can create entire design pieces just using type, to me is immensely fascinating, and something I explore and practice in my own work.

Watching the episode of Abstract on Puala Scher this week took me down memory lane and made me feel quite nostalgic. I was reminded of the time in my career I had the privilege of working with Paula Scher when I convinced the Heart and Stroke Foundation to rebrand their 60 year old identity. As she built out the HSF mark, I worked hand in hand with her as in-house creative lead to build out the designs and application. It was one of my best experiences in life to be able to work directly with her. I still cherish the sketchbook where her and I have our sketches intertwined while we discussed and worked out ideas for collateral. I really enjoyed bringing the identity to life, and building it out for my team to use. 

PaulaScher_Images2

Workshop Challenge: The Quadriptych

The QUADRIPTYCH. I think what intrigued me most about this challenge was the idea of 4 things coming together to make one thing. The idea of the four questions we were asked. The fact that my first name is 4 letters. When I got to answering the four questions—WHO are you? WHAT do you do? WHERE are you? WHY design?—I seemed to have four ways of depicting each answer. And while I started sketching away various ways to visually answer these questions, somewhere in my head I wasn't satisfied with a static solution. 

I'm not an animator by any means. However during my career I was exposed to and actually learned to art direct animators, videographers and editors very early on. It was always them who breathed life into my designs and made them sing or dance. So while every part of my being didn't want to animate this myself, I mean could I? There's that inner self-saboteur again! I promised myself I'd experiment and allow myself to take things on and try, fail even, although that terrifies the perfectionist in me. I decided I wanted my quadriptych to be an animated GIF. Each frame would be like a facet, opening and closing, giving access to each other. Work in parts but also as a whole. Endlesslessly looping, forever happening, and mesmerizing in a way. Encapsulating this visual story of me and parts of me. The idea worked as a sketch, and in my head it was clear how the final would be. 

KhanNida_QuadriptychSketches

The sketches I made helped me to think out my answers as ideas on paper. Initially when I began drawing them out they were going to be ideas for different quadriptychs. Along the way I decided I wanted all of them as 4 frames for each of the four answers so then they would come together to form one piece. I put these up on the Ideas Wall for peer-review. 

IdeasWall_Week1_1

After peer review, I went ahead ans created all the designs in Illustrator. Easy enough. Then came the hard part the part that I was dreading, how on earth am I going to animate this myself?! I mean I took one course, what 10 years ago on animation, as an elective. I know how it works in theory, even to the extent of asking someone skilled in animation how to bring the vision alive. By this time it was midweek, I honestly felt like it wouldn't work. Then I remembered Joseph saying on the webinar just do it, it doesn't need to be perfect and that we just want to keep at it and get as much done as we can. So I opened After Effects, it's like 10pm at night now. I think I must have started and then at some point just gotten lost playing within After Effects trying one movement and timing after another. If time passed, I didn't know how much. But soon enough I was done! It was working as a video. I needed a GIF. It was 2am in the morning at this point. I'm like ok cool, I actually did it. Googled how to turn a video into a GIF and that was it! I've not done something like this in a while. It felt good to accomplish something I was sure I would not be able to do, and having fun doing it. So now my quadriptych was ready to go onto the Ideas Wall. 

IdeasWall_Week1_2

Kerrie provided some very good feedback, and when I thought about it, the question frames were the ones I struggled with most, so I had just used some horzontal lines as texture behind them. If you notice they aren't part of the thumbnail sketches, so those were the frames I hadn't quite figured out. But I knew they needed to be there when I got to the production part, so while I was in After Effects I was like ok there need to be 5 frames not 4 for this to work. When she suggested they be solid black, I was like yeah! That's exactly it! So I decided even though it was like the last day of the week now, I was going to make that tweak. The other thing that really worked with Kerrie's feedback was to flip the forground and background colours of the actual letters that formed my name. The second I tried that it was like it fell into place and really emdoied the bold look I was going for. So I made the edits and after taking the peer review suggestions posted it on the Ideas Wall one last time. 

IdeasWall_Week1_3

Here is my final Quadriptych after all peer review:

KhanNida_Quadriptych2
KhanNida_4Ws2

Ideas Wall 

I've already shared the comments on the Ideas Wall that were related to the weekly challenge. Evidence of contribution both mine to others and others to my stuff is all catalgued in the Studio PDF. I'm sharing here on the blog as well. 

Here is the contribution I made to others on the Ideas Wall:

1-Week1_IdeasWall
2-Week1_IdeasWall

Final thoughts and reflection

I really enjoyed the lectures and the weekly challenge. The fast pace of the weekly challenge and documenting this journal while also commenting on the resources, case studies and peer-review are teaching me to give up trying to 'get it right' and getting comfortable with 'failing fast'. I'm also learning to 'try things on' even if I think they won't work. So in a sense being ok with being uncomfortable.

I really struggled with getting the blog published. Before the course started I had wordpress all set up. I had even chosen my theme, installed it, and put in some dummy content to get it going. It worked like a charm. When I got to actually writing and posting my entry, and uploading images, the theme somehow failed and gave me a critical error. Nothing would work. I learned the theme needed some space allotments to be changed at the back end with the web host. Although they were changed, wordpress stilled failed to work. Week 2 was finally here and my blog was not up. I had to re-install wordpress and chose to go with a new solution. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I feel very stimulated with the experience and my interest is piqued by all the things I would like to try. At the end of this week, I think if I could go back and do the challenge again with more time, I would try to incorporate and play with some more ideas that have come up during the inquiry. 

Previous
Week 12: Development and Launch
Next
Week 2: Industry today

© Nida Khan, 2020 — All rights reserved.

error: Content is protected !!