Exhibition

The exhibition is up and running now. Hooray!
One week left for the assessment and next Monday we meet the external examiners for the last assessment.

So is it over?
Unfortunately yes.

I promised myself to continue working on certain subjects. There is still Colonel's Walk (the Underpass) that we are developing through Spawforths, amazonails that myself and Pandora are working and of course the book that I want to finish and print, so I guess it is not over yet. University is though and those great Wednesday brakes are sure to be missed.

I hope I will continue posting a few things every now and then, the progress of the book and the Underpass and any kind of interesting links for inspiring works around the world.
Let's keep in touch!

Learning Agreement

The Learning Agreement is done and handed in. After a few days of frustration and long hours in front of InDesign, it is all ready and gone in. There are obviously a lot of things that could be improved for such a document, especially in terms of presentation, paper choice and layout but it got to a stage that could be paused and presented, so I hope it is fine.
Now all focus goes to the setting up of the exhibition which starts in less than two weeks..

Learning Agreement Layout

I am thinking of using the template that I have started designing, for the learning agreement presentation. Since the book is going to be presented as work in progress, then maybe this smaller document is a good chance to try it out. Here are some basic page layouts.

Manifesto

hmm not really, just a few sentences from the Learning Agreement that should be ready by Friday..

.//

I moved today in the kitchen. Just to change room or whatever I see in front of me everyday. It is a bit frustrating being at the same place all the time, seeing the same things around you and hearing the same sounds again and again.
A small change I thought, which might result on either some ispiration (from the pans?) or some extra weight (due to the strategic distance between workspace and the fridge)..

The Learning Agreement is driving me insane!

Update/ The Poster

I am currently focusing on the writing of the Learning Agreement. I find it a bid difficult to identify the most important parts of this MA. Most of the experiences were (and still are) a vital part of the research and experimentations that I was doing all year.

I also started putting some ideas together for the exhibition poster for the MA Graphic Arts and Design course as well as the Contemporary Fine Art Practice in Leeds Metropolitan University.
The exhibition is going to run after the assessments for both courses which is the 20th and 21st September on H Block's 6th and 8th floor.

I will soon come back with some more ideas for the poster. Until then, just a first idea of basic typography. I particularly liked the character of this font (Politica) on its different weights. I believe it manages to promote the contemporary character of the course but at the same time, its clarity and legibility can also represent some of the core values of the course.

The Table: some thinking..

Just an update on what I am up to, since there are a lot of things running at the same time!

After the table was sanded perferctly with the great help of Derek from Leeds College of Art & Design, I took it back home until next Wednesday that I am going to screenprint on it.

The table looks good, very promising and the total printable area (probably all the table surfaces to be honest!) is big enough to house any kind of comments, histories, outlines of uses and other staff that I will need to include.

And this is the problem maybe!

It was easy enough to decide to go along with such a project but when the time comes for the final product, you start realising how permanent all this information will be. Since we are screenprinting (and ultimately vanishing the wood), the words that are going to be on it are never going to come off!

Hmm, what a challenge. Should this raise a few questions? Should it all maybe be a bit more hidden? Should it be in such a way that is not as easy to read as an article in a newspaper? Should it be a narrative of ideas, information, data? Or maybe just random facts about the table (that the user is called to discover, answer and question them?)

Definitely a nice and clean presentation of the data is something I would go for. Something I always like is legibility and ease-of-use. But the challenge is maybe trying to be more fun this time. Try to make the table stay interesting even when you look at it for a thousand times. Afterall its an everyday object that you are going to be facing all the time. I guess having a person in your living room, telling you the same thing over and over and over again, gets you a bit tired (except if this person says ‘I love you’) (should I forget everything and just print a huge ‘I love you’ on the top?)

We shall see.

the Underpass: Brainstorming

first notes on project approach

Interaction Design

Interaction Design (IxD or IaD) is the discipline of defining and creating the behavior of technical, biological, environmental and organizational systems. Examples of these systems are software, products, mobile devices, environments, services, wearables, and even organizations themselves. Interaction design defines the behavior (the "interaction") of an artifact or system in response to its users over time.

Interaction designers are typically informed by user research, design with an emphasis on behavior as well as form, and evaluate design in terms of usability and emotional factors.

The Underpass Project

A new project.
The Underpass Project is a side project of the larger Prince of Wales regeneration in Pontefract, Yorkshire.

Prince of Wales Masterplan (copyright Spawforths)

Spawforths have been working for the last two years for UKCoal on a Development Framework and Masterplan for the re-development of Pontefract Pit Yard Colliery Site (Prince of Wales) and recently, in December 2006 submitted an outline planning application to Wakefield MDC.
At the moment, Spawforths - alongside sub-consultants - are working on a Design Code for this proposed development, which explores detailed design aspects.

The Underpass is an existing pedestrian link between Pontefract town centre and the Prince of Wales site. The opportunity to improve and urbanise Colonels Walk will help to promote it as a key pedestrian connection between the new development and the old town centre.

The Underpass detail

I am really excited to work on this particular project that can definitely test some ideas of how graphic design can co-exist with architecture and urbanism. This is an opportunity to apply graphic design to a wider context, to make it become part of the design process and introduce it to other disciplines.

This is a project to explore cultural factors, experiences, spatial environments and links. An exciting process after all that can introduce new ways of thinking about design solutions and will attempt to explore opportunities of a multi-discipline approach.

Research: Project needs + Development

On the last seminar (21/02/07), we talked about research needs for our projects. We tried to identify them, expand them and interlink them in order to discover ways of expanding the projects.

‘What research needs to be done to help contextualise/ inform what you are doing?’

The main categories that were identified (in terms of areas of development and concern) are the following:

TECHNICAL
AESTHETIC
CULTURAL
SOCIAL / ECONOMIC
POLITICAL

The professional world (contemporary+historic) in graphic design and architecture, new technologies that can be explored and studied, tested and finally used, as well as the psychology of the client / designer on accepting new methods on multidisciplinary design projects, were just a few of the first questions of such a research.

In order to ‘discover’ new needs (or at least not obvious research needs) it would be a good idea to work backwards. The five categories that were mentioned before can act as targets and an expansion of their meaning could bring interesting results.

Let’s see a few images of such explorations, where each of the five words/ categories is expanded and explored through language.

'research' word map

'technical' word map

'social' word map

'political' word map

'economic' word map

'cultural' word map

'aesthetic' word map

Mapping Progress (update: 30.11.06)

Brainstorming

Influences: Carlos Garaicoa / Lisa Openheim

Carlos Garaicoa

Nowhere is the constant march of history more obviously stamped on our surroundings than in cities, with the seemingly endless processes of demolition, reconstruction and rebuilding going on all around us. The cityscape of Liverpool, in particular, is currently changing so rapidly that even lifelong residents are bewildered. This makes it a perfect site for Carlos Garaicoa, whose art has long focused on the complex structures and ongoing evolutions of cities – the ways in which, although cities are constantly changing, they always retain, half-hidden, the traces of what went before. For International 06, Garaicoa makes intriguing use of his own photographs, ‘invading’ their surfaces to create poignant images of Liverpool buildings haunted by their own past.

Lisa Openheim

We tend to think of archives as impersonal collections of documents, but behind any archive there is a person (or many people), a purpose and an agenda. Lisa Oppenheim is fascinated by the human stories hidden within archives – the notes handwritten in the margins of historical documents, the scribbled descriptions on the backs of old photographs. She’s also fascinated by the many ways in which archives allow us to slip between past and present. For International 06, Oppenheim will make use of the archive of Liverpool photographer Edward Chambré Hardman, but with a twist, setting words alongside images and past alongside present to create a uniquely fluid portrait of the changed – and changing – city.

18 October 2006

visiting lecturer Andrea Zapp (media artist)
www.azapp.de

04 October 2006

The H-Block of Leeds Metropolitan University is an iconic figure for an observer. Behind the hardness and stiffness of its walls, there is life. Activities and creative processes, ideas, workshops and conversations. Behind the harsh exterior a living organism is evolving and developing in order to discover and experiment with contemporary arts and graphic design. Come inside and play.

Statement of Intent